Close or Not (2020-2021)
Grietje Bouman and I have been collaborating on a social distance project that resulted with an art blog. We decided upon a title for it: Close or Not.
Close or Not is now online. Feel free to have a look!
https://closeornot.wordpress.com/
How it all started:
Grietje is from Winterswijk, the Netherlands. Iris is from Zagreb, Croatia. Both are visual artists that know each other from various art projects. At the end of March when the government measures took place, Grietje and Iris got in touch over a Facebook chat. At this time both were in a kind of shock and despair from the virus situation they both had to deal with. So one would say, at a far enough social distance, separated by borders, they came up with a plan to motivate and encourage each other. The idea was that they would send texts about their soul stirs each day by email. The recipient of the text would then create a reply in a form of an image/artwork. It works like this: Grietje reacts with a photo to Iris’s text and Iris replies with an image to Grietje’s text. The artworks are interpretations of texts and both artists are free while doing this.
They agreed that the project lasts for as long as the measures are in order. So as they do not know until when this will be going on or how big the project will get.
They are working on it side by side and this is what keeps them going.
Close or Not @ SchoK 2021 (Schoorlse Kunsten 25th edition, Schoorl, NL):
Close or Not @ Our Plague Year (Vrijhof, University of Twente, NL):
