Cocky Eek
FIFTH BEACON OF HI-LO: CURVE TO BE REEXPERIENCED. With Baken Marrum/Vlieland: Curve, a classic among ‘walkable’ sculptures gets new life. The inflatable work ‘Curve’ by Cocky Eek in collaboration with Schweigman& is being redeployed at two locations. It is a great opportunity to experience this work! Curve is a dizzying tunnel; the visitor enters the work on foot and alone, and undergoes a journey without visual guidance. With every step, in a cadence that is reinforced by a sound composition, the outside world drifts further away. The visitor undergoes a disorienting journey in which light, material, movement, sound and architectural form merge. A total experience in a magical and alienating world. Spatial artist Cocky Eek created the spectacular installation Curve in 2015, in collaboration with Schweigman& (theatre maker Boukje Schweigman). In this summer’s installation, the work will have a new soundtrack by Machinefabriek. Presented at Het Lage Noorden, Marrum and at the Into The Great Wide Open Festival 2024
Newspaper publication Leeuwarder Courant, In de compleet witte tunnel wacht een bijzondere ervaring, Gitte Brugman, 3 july 2024, pg 28-29.
The local newspaper, published a great comic about the Curve installation, Het Friesch Dagblad, 9 aug 2024. thank you so much Aart Cornelissen!
Research presentation Fault Lines Forum 2024. During the academic year 2023-2024 I am part of KABK’s Deep Future Research Group. my research Dark Skies and the Art of Dreaming will be presented at FaultLines. This day we will share and discuss, research projects developed in the Deep Futures Research Group. The presentations centre the processes, methods, questions, and theoretical concepts that fuel the research and are therefore accessible to anyone interested in conducting research through practice. Everyone is welcome to attend all or part of the conference—students, staff, workshop instructors, coordinators, heads, tutors, friends!
Book publication: Listening a Research method in Art and Design, published by KABK Lectorate Design 2024. Contribution: “A snow Walk” pg 122-123. Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague, ISBN 9789072600646
Inflatable pavillion: UMAA, Unité mobile d’action artistique, , Mille Plateaux Centre Chorégraphique National de La Rochelle (FR), Cognac 2-24 April 2024
Come on the Muddy Muddy Mystery Tour and join the ‘quick and dirty’ mud sensing and listening workshop hosted by artist Cocky Eek. Where & When: Sunday, 10 March 2024 at Het Lage Noorden, Marrum, Friesland. How: Apply at the link and we will organise the travel from Amsterdam and back, field trip to the saltmarshes at the Wadden Sea, workshop, mud (guides), and a special festive and experiential diner with presentations by ArtScience students. Are you an artist in the fields of sound, listening, ecology, and sensorial experiences interested in getting your hands and ears dirty? To join the workshop and listen in, to, and with the tidal landscape along the Frisian coastline, submit a small application form by 17 February 👉 Sonic Acts -Muddy Muddy Mystery Tour
FoAMs’ Anarchive looks at FoAM’s multi-decade existence from different vantage points, to unearth or revisit things that can have generative potential for the here-and-now and the yet-to-come. The anarchived materials from the FoAM network complement and contrast newly commissioned pieces by FoAM’s members, collaborators and friends. You can visit FoAM’s five thematic journeys here, my blogpost 1000-portals and Walk with me are small parts of the whole. post 6 June 2023.
Book publication: A Field Guide to Machine Wilderness: a book by Theun Karelse and Alice Smits. The FGMW was Launced at 22th September 2023, Zone2Source, Amsterdam. 11 students of the ArtScience Interfaculty participated in Why Look at Animals? led by Cocky Eek, part of the Machine Wilderness program at ARTIS Royal Zoo in Amsterdam. Where we e explored if we can rediscover animals as highly esteemed informants and guides. The findings are published n pg 131-151. The PDF can be founde here: Fieldguide to Machine Wilderness . post 23 September 2023.
The two-days workshop-program Field Academy: Amstelpark as Sensorial Heritage: is given by a myriad of wonderful workshop leaders, all delving into the discreet and intangible legacy of the Amstelpark which allowed the participants to anchor in the worldly in a total new way. Program see: Zone2Source, Amstelpark, Amsterdam. Read the fieldreport by Anne-Florence Neveu. 24-25 September 2022.
The installation Void is presented at the Conflux Festival 2022 is an installation where one could insert its head into a pitch black sphere in which kinetic sound became the major actor in an experience of amaurosis. Besides all the conceptual metaphors this act embodies, the work gives the audience a sensorial experience, reminding us of our direct relation to the world through our senses. What happens if you take them away, or enhance others by creating a hyper focus on sound? Void: a collaboration with Joris Strijbos. Conflux Festival, 2-5 June 2022, V2-Roterdam, NL.
The Installation Spectrum makes color tactile and tangible. How intensely can you experience color? Color as a phenomenon which you don’t just see, but which totally absorbs…Escape the mundane. Fall backwards into a black hole and reawaken in an infinite spectrum. An immersive experience which will give you a whole new perspective on the everyday life.
‘Following Blaas and CurveSpectrum completes a triptych centered on white space, each piece created with spatial designer Cocky Eek. In Blaas you crawl through an inflatable balloon; in Curve you enter an endlessly spiraling tunnel. Spectrum starts by asking: how can we make the color physically tangible?’ A joint project involving Matthijs Munnik, a light artist with an extraordinary sense of color, and composer Yannis Kyriakides, who turns the sound composition into a spatial experience. produced by Schweigman&. Presented 9 feb t/m 16 feb 2022, Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, FR. cancelled due to Covid.
23rd Biennale of Sydney. For the Space In Between program Carolyn Strauss Slow Research Lab was joined by spatial designer Cocky Eek and landscape architect Anna Fink to create a site-specific intervention called Resonant Bodies_Tank Stream. The audio-based exercise invites Biennale visitors to gently tune their awareness to diverse scales and substance of the local urban landscape—situating their bodies within it while encouraging them to stretch their perception to more-than-human spaces and temporalities. 2 march-13 juni 2022, Biennale Sydney.
23rd Biennale of Sydney. For the Space In Between program Carolyn Strauss Slow Research Lab was joined by spatial designer Cocky Eek and landscape architect Anna Fink to create a site-specific intervention called Resonant Bodies_Tank Stream. The audio-based exercise invites Biennale visitors to gently tune their awareness to diverse scales and substance of the local urban landscape—situating their bodies within it while encouraging them to stretch their perception to more-than-human spaces and temporalities. 2 march-13 juni 2022.
Published interview with Olivia Grandville, artistic director of Mille Plateaux Centre Chorégraphique National de La Rochelle (FR) and Cocky Eek by Gilles Amalvi. Newsletter sept/dec 2022.
Book publication: For the absolutely wonderful Slow Spatial Reader: Chronicles of Radical Affection, edited by Carolyn F. Strauss, I contributed the essay Standing with Two Feet in Complex Matter, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021, Published under the Creative Commons. Slow Spatial Reader offers a collection of essays about ‘Slow’ approaches to spatial practice and pedagogy from around the world. The book’s contributors are from twenty-four countries on five continents. Each one brings distinct philosophical and disciplinary approaches—from ‘spatial’ fields like architecture, sculpture, and installation, but also performative, somatic and/or dramaturgical practices—, exploring how we think about and engage with space at a range of scales, tempos, and durations.
Book publication: Landscape of Car – a handbook for urban design engagement: essay contribution. This publication offers a window into a cross-cultural project of urban design engagement in the city of Tiznit, Morocco. Led by the Netherlands-based platform Slow Research Lab, the bureau of architect Salima Naji, and Naji’s nonprofit association Gardiens de la Mémoire, the project involved creative practitioners from fields including architecture, design, landscape, urbanism, and artistic research. Published on Dec 6 – 2020