Painting as a sensory experience (dialogue and body tour)

Speakers: Gijs Frieling & Aukje Dekker
Location: Marres, Capucijnenstraat 98, Maastricht
Time: 7 – 9 pm
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Painting is such an obvious visual phenomenon that we rarely experience it as a call to sensory action. Instead of acting upon them, we read and try to understand paintings. We contemplate their themes and meanings. We discuss expression, gesture, emotion, and even the rules of representation. We don’t smell the paint, touch or lick it. We don’t allow our bodies to follow the brushstrokes. We rarely lie down and find new perspectives. We don’t imitate figures or animals in paintings. Paintings are thus radically emancipated from bodily movement or broad sensory perception. Why is that? Many will say that the body is not needed in the appreciation of painting. Today we are going to explore the opposite.

Gijs Frieling (1966) was educated at the Rietveld academie (1986-1991) and the Rijksakademie (1994-1996) both in Amsterdam, He won the Royal prize for painting in 1994, the Prix de Rome in 1999 and the Cobra art prize in 2009. Frieling makes permanent and temporary wall paintings related to ornamental and decorative traditions. From 2006 - 2010 he was director and chief curator of W139 art space in Amsterdam. Currently he works as the art advisor for the Dutch Chief Government Architect. He is a supervisory board member of the Mondrian Fund and a member of the jury for the Dutch Royal prize for painting. Gijs Frieling is director of the colossal mural exhibition The Painted Bird in Marres.

Aukje Dekker (1983) is a visual artist educated at the Rietveld Academy, the Sandberg (2002-2006) and the Central St Martins, London, UK (2006-2008). She is co-founder of the Eddy the Eagle Museum that features a subversive, fearless and outrageous collection of exhibitions and initiatives by all kinds of makers, artists and innocents. Her works were exhibited nationally and internationally in the UK, Germany, Russia and Japan. Her latest project Societeit Sexyland (2016) received funding from the Amsterdams Fonds Voor de Kunst.

Training the Senses

The 2017 season for our Training the Senses Program features a wide array of topics and experts. We explore ways to measure space and our environment, by hearing, movement, and mixing our senses. The series encompasses plant and animal sensing sessions with Natasha Myers, Thought Collider and Espen Sommer Eide, audio workshops and learned hearing by respectively David Helbich and Ana Tajadura-Jimenez, dance thinking with Sara Wookey and synesthesia insights with Jamie Ward.

The sense of movement

April 19, 7 pm ·
Speaker: Sara Wookey
Location: Marres, House for Contemporary Culture
Movement is the primary sense with which we explore our environment and give meaning to it. Building on her 20-year long experience, American choreographer Sara Wookey will engage in a public dialogue about the ways in which dancers and choreographers can provide new perspectives on space and movement.

Sensing nature

3rd May, 7pm · Speakers: Natasha Myers, Espen Sommer Eide & Thought Collider
Location: De Brandweerkantine, Capucijnenstraat 21, Maastricht
We tend to think of nature as something that is outside of us, as a broad entanglement of things that silently undergoes our actions and observation. But what if we see ourselves as part of an environment that senses us as much as it is sensed by us? Scientists increasingly find proof of communication networks, relations between plants, animals and humans that only few of us are aware of.

Mixing the senses

21st June, 7 pm
Speakers: Jamie Ward
Location: De Brandweerkantine

People with synesthesia experience the ordinary world in extraordinary ways. To some, each letter has its own distinct color; to others, images are directly related to taste, the sequence of numbers glide through space, or music is an animated spectacle. Scientists are struggling to find a good explanation for this mixing of the senses, which may help for instance to discover in exploring ways in which blind people can be made to see again by using their other senses.

Training the Senses 2017 is organised by:
Valentijn Byvanck
Jessica Capra
Zaida Violan