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Koen Vanmechelen & Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts at the Darwin’s Dream exhibition, London, 2014

BEHIND THE SCENES:
JSVCPROJECTS AND KOEN VANMECHELEN
The Battery Channel Podcast

September 9th 2020

The world we are living in today is not the world of the 1st of February 2020. There are orders around us that are so much vaster than we are. Everyone has been fundamentally changed.

JSVCprojects

EPISODE III – UNCOMFORTABLE

08 September 2020

In this third episode of The Battery Channel, UNCOMFORTABLE, Jill Silverman Van Coenegrachts talks to Koen Vanmechelen. Together they explore the meaning of this moment in time. JSVC has been working with Koen Vanmechelen since 1999.

Your work has been building up a head of steam for 25 years to arrive at this point in time.

JSVCprojects

We’re very pleased to speak on the subject of this transformative moment with Vanmechelen, whose work has made a singular point around diversity and transformation.

Coming out of the pandemic – we have seen this huge human awareness of social injustice. This is a moment of social change we have not seen since 1968. […] Every culture is trying to balance the economic needs of their community v the public health issues.

JSVCprojects

Over this period, the work has systematically examined the relationship between human beings and nature. It continues to do so.

His work deals with these questions and these paradoxes from the very beginning by looking so clearly at the macrocosm of the chicken family.

JSVCprojects

The conversation on art and COVID-19 starts with Joseph Beuys, on balance and nature.

The power of [Beuys’] vision was so palpable and it was a universal vision. Joseph Beuys was an artist who saw how everything was interconnected. He came to become a lightning rod for social change and a recalibration of the social order.

JSVCprojects

The conversation looks at links between the death of George Floyd and the pandemic,

We have seen […] this huge human awareness of social injustice coming out of the terrible experience in the United States with George Floyd.

JSVCprojects

It’s been over five months since COVID-19 forced us into a new way of connecting.

Art and the art world have a huge role to play in whatever is coming next and wherever we are right this minute. […] This is a transformative moment and I think art has an homeopathic position in the body politic of the world. […] Art has a way of influencing hearts and minds.

JSVCprojects

The sculpture, UNCOMFORTABLE, defines this episode and title.

As Koen Vanmechelen describes:

I think the future is freedom. Freedom of thinking, freedom of speech.

Koen Vanmechelen

With this crisis, my work has become more visual, I can feel that.

Koen Vanmechelen

In the LABIOMISTA park you see all the installations with the animals, the chickens, the drama.

Koen Vanmechelen

How do we let a child be in the new world? Shall we block it from freedom, put in quarantine, shall we give him the liberty to exist?

Koen Vanmechelen

When the environment becomes more violent, we become more social.

Koen Vanmechelen

When I hear you, Jill, I can feel an energy and a passion that there is something about the future.

Koen Vanmechelen

I hope this pandemic but also its reaction bring us in a less designed world and in a more real and authentic world where true culture true art is knowledge and a discussion platform for further generations.

Koen Vanmechelen

Children are our immune system, their future is our health

Koen Vanmechelen

The pandemic has brought a profound change to our sensitivities as one global community.

JSVCprojects

There has never been a more exciting time to be an artist.

JSVCprojects

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