Together in balance we learn to collectively shape matters.
Striving to create a space that is both inviting and thought-provoking, a space where hands and minds come together to unfold the interconnectedness of our world.
based in Groningen, The Netherlands.
Click here to view CV
Liz de Vries expresses herself in a collective in which the body works jointly with all life and rhythms, inside and outside the environment it encounters.
She herself is in a continuous search to learn from and relate to matters. Seeing herself and all their entangled connections as a collective supports this search with the freedom that is released in the process. Not to be the owner of material gives space to search on shaping collective connections. How to learn from the connections which the body is shaped off and what new encounters can be discovered.
The encounters form the basis of the collective work.
Future Fossils, research publication June 2024
The research publication of the project Future Fossils is a bundle shaped by writings from different perspectives and their embodying forms of life. They are writings I have encountered on my journey, transformed into a new kaleidoscopic narrative. The encountered stories taught me about the perception of life in its entangled circularity. As it captures the narrative, the bundle can be read in the same way. It is a circular story where new encounters can unfold into new perspectives. It unravels my personal and artistic research, where the texts of the bundle are guiders, to reshape the narrative I tell with my trails- the trails that represent the behavior influence on earth, as they are our future fossils.
While walking on the soils which scape the landscape of a land I refer to as my home, I feel my feet slib in the clay that forms the ground and
feel my body sinking in the past.
The ground shows us a past beyond human eyes. It shows connections in a scale of geological time hard to imagine from human perspective. Even though the landscape is still rebounding from the past ice age - very slowly bouncing back from the weight the ground had to encounter - our present is shaping the matters of what will become past. It shapes a narrative that will be told when our future, the future of humans and non-humans currently inhabiting the earth, becomes the past.
As my body weight is marking my walk, I sense myself to wonder of the trails I leave behind.
The trails that are shaping the environment with such an influence they become fossils for a new life to discover. It makes me feel uncomfortable, ashamed, thinking of my trails in the present of our capitalistic life. Our narrative, our disturbance expressed worldwide, with compounds created that are not able to decompose. Spreading through waters, soil, food and bodies, which makes my body a messenger of trails. Trails who will show a narrative of interactions that are slowly decomposing, a present slowly becoming a fossil.
contact me if you want to read the full research publication.
Future Fossils, performative & visual installation June 2024
Future Fossils unfolds a search of the interactions that shape our environment, stemming from the intricate web of life.
Our human lives are intertwined with all forms of matter, and these encounters dictate natural processes that are currently controlled by human behavior. In this reality, our bodies seem to float rather than have a solid rooting connection to our surroundings.
As we unravel the origins of our present through fossils, our current actions will eventually become part of the past narrative.
The destructive interactions we experience now will leave behind future fossils, shaping the narrative that is yet to be told.
This work, Future Fossils, is a performative; interactive exploration with the passing of time in its natural life force. Using single-threaded strings made of wool and hand-shaped sculptures crafted from locally sourced clay, this installation represents a collaboration between different eras - the shaping of the past and the evolution towards the future. As the wool slowly unravels, the sculptures will fall to the ground, inviting to participate by holding onto a sculpture and halting its descent. This bodily action questions our place as humans in relation to natural forces.
The installation contains out of a few phases in which the performative act changes. During the exhibition, the performance begins by hanging up the clay sculptures with the self-spun wool on the structure of the installation. Once all of the sculptures are hanging, they are finding themself in a fragile but balanced state. The natural surroundings will influence their state as the gravity, wind and rain effects the unravelling of the strings. At this phase I have performed an act in which one sculpture is held, thereby releasing the gravity that was on the sculpture and stopping the passage of unravelling time. As long as the sculpture is held, the natural force is stopped by human behavior. After this individual performance, the public were invited to perform the same bodily action. While the natural force of unravelling performs, the human bodily action able of halting time questionings our relationship towards this force.
Once all sculptures have fallen to the ground the performance starts over again.
Still of video documentation performance contact me if you want to see the full video documentation of the performance.
Our Grounds, performative project & visual installation May 2023
How connected are we to our ground?
Do we need a better understanding of our past to reconnect with the earth?
Will the ground show us past?
During the exhibition in Tuin in de Stad I created an ongoing performance as my first research for the project 'our grounds'. During the performance I processed natural clay from the location and made it into a visual installation. An exploration of new connections to deep time, earth and material with the natural life forces of the environment.
Visual installation Short video recording
Search for collectivity, 24-hours residency at Kunsthuis SYB January 2024
As part of a collaboration between Academy Minerva and Kunsthuis Syb, we were invited to be part of a 24-hour residency.
At our 24-hour residency at Kunsthuis Syb, we wanted to give a tribute to the slow and modest. Through writing letters we have been searching for nostalgia, repetitiveness and analogue processes. In connection with a new environment.
By observing nature in hibernation outside and within ourselves, we have been logging our thoughts onto paper through a typing machine,
where
To make room for the modest,
Finding the political in craftsmanship,
And searching for timelessness in writing.
Residency together with Linn Morsink
Footprint, performance & sculpture September 2022
Footprint is a performance strongly connected to my childhood, as my grandparents often took me to their holiday house on the Dutch island Ameland. A place where I, at a young age, was introduced to the extraordinary movement of the ebb and flow of the tide. Sometimes the tide would allow me to walk over the poles on the beach, while at other times they would be surrounded by water, making a balancing walk over them impossible.
Walking over the poles, nature shows its own footprint. The wood shows an origin and age, strong but slowly decomposing in the rough, salty sea wind.
The feeling of my footprint on nature's footprint was the inspiration for this performance, where I balance my walk with pieces of clay between my feet and the wooden poles. Using my own body weight to create a print that shows my footprint on one side and nature's on the other. The collaboration of two footprints and the force of gravity that shapes the collective act of the performance.
A cell, installation with ceramic, clay and wool May 2023
the centre, a heart, a cell
alive, breathing into a space, a world
shaped by parts of me.
Connected,
to its grounds, while sending out my energy
to be found in space
a centre, a heart, the cell.
The installations consist of three ceramic shells connected with self spun wool, resembling a cell. The centre of the space, the centre from which all life has its origin. The work represents a search of connection, a connection that searches deeper than the encounters from human body to human body. An understanding of the orgin of life that evolved to an intricate web that we find ourselves in today.
How to recover this connection when our present life is shaped by human modification.
Fragments, installation May 2023
Fragments, installation
Our ground, performative experiment May 2023
A recent performance/ visual installation exploring a connection between the visitor and the installation. Inviting the visitor to become part of the installation, during the performance, in a way of being connected to the installation and each other.
Experiment in search of connecting the collective creations with others.
Freeze of performance
Kombucha, material research Febuary 2023
Kombucha is known as a fermented tea drink, but can its symbiotic knowledge guide us to new creations?
Kombucha is made by combining tea leaves with a colony of sugar-fed bacteria and yeast, which slowly ferment to create a microbe-filled drink. The colony of bacteria and yeast, called a scoby, is the symbiotic source of the fermentation. During this project, a collaboration was formed with the characteristics of the microbes. By researching their growth and habitat, while nourishing and luring them to more life. Once the bacteria had formed a firm layer on top of the liquid, the material was ready to be harvested and dried.
The collaboration with the material brought an understanding of human interaction with natural life processes. The microbes creating the tissue cannot be controlled -their growth can only happen by tempting them to new life. By providing them with the right conditions and feeding them sugar, you can stimulate optimal growth. But just when you think you have the production under control, it is disrupted by other life forms (mostly fungi in my case!) starting to colonise the culture.
The time the fermentation holds by its growth becomes the basis of the material knowledge- and collectivity.
