Drifting studio practice

Artist duo van Brummelen and de Haan make films with a documentary approach. Although artists are usually considered “the authors” of “their” works, van Brummelen and de Haan note that working in situ involves negotiations and interaction with multifarious acting bodies that co-determine what is being filmed. In the thesis they propose to extend authorship to include a variety of actors—human and nonhuman—, basing their argument on the eroding sculpture Monument of Sugar (2007) and two participatory film projects: Episode of the Sea (2014), coauthored with the Dutch fishing community of Urk, and Stones Have Laws (2018) with Maroon communities in Suriname. By placing their own practical findings in conversation with discourse on participatory film, (de)coloniality, new materialism, (non)human rights and the Anthropocene, the artists seek to gain greater insight into the different entities that are involved in an extensive coauthorship and their reciprocal relationships. Gradually filmmaking unfolds as an inherently participatory activity of humans, film tools, ancestors, gods, laws, economic forces, rocks, plants, animals, and streaming waters: an ad hoc creative collective developing its own experimental jurisprudence on the way.
Drifting Studio Practice was developed in the context of the pilot project Promoveren in de Kunsten.