benjamin schoones places self-produced, sometimes modified or ready-made objects in constellations that nest to their given architecture. Chosen off-the-shelf parts are often linked to distribution and manufacturing processes that may have eventually been rendered obsolete. These works are sometimes supported by sounds & written gestures. Instead of following a fixated argument, it tends more toward exploring the incomprehensible feelings of disorientation in ever-changing tensions and (infra)structures. Rhythm, repetition & juxtaposition that leaves room for doubt, inertia, and physical engagement. Zooming in and out, circling from outside interactions of cold distances to inner somatic processing in interaction with all these surrounding synthetics. In this sense, the objects made are not simply as it is, but become an alienated mediator.

His practice often refers to the context in which production and consumption are inextricably linked to virtually every form of material practice; it seems hardly possible to detach objects from their context as ready-made, purposeful products. In contemporary everyday life—characterized by technological acceleration, constant innovation, and a deep-rooted performance culture—objects are consumed and constantly redefined within networks of value, visibility, and functionality. Therefore, my work attempts to open up a space in which the detachment of objects can function as an entry point to bodily and affective resonance. By pursuing a certain cold aesthetic in which a distance arises. In this way, the object partly surrounds itself with immediate Interpretation, which activates a form of delayed perception. Simultaneously, I focus on evoking a visceral, bodily response: an affective layer that cannot be approached purely cognitively, but manifests itself in the uncertain, the ambiguous, and even the unpleasant.

This hum is a tonal sigh II

The installation echoes an assembly where exhaustion is being produced continuously. But, is this where we are? This installation is not the factory; it is clean. It is a new place. This new place has filled the gap between exhaustion – if not a main consideration in our capitalistic society, it is a main consideration in the overall work and practice- and sculptures. They are both individual works as much as they are together, holding a space of rhythm, interdependence, and relation, convincingly united through sound as a phenomenological aspect. After all, a sigh or a yawn – oxygen, a breath of air – is always needed. To release. And, perhaps as a last echo, as a prolongation of time, a sigh may also be an opening up to new spaces, new beginnings, new steps, new urgencies.

If artificial skin, a breath, a smell, humming, or the devoid of a body, is transformed into a generative recovery, then rest and digest may open up to a yet to be discovered (perhaps not yet existing) space of thinking, resisting, and acting…a recovering from our dreams perhaps, towards future spaces beyond the factory, the role of the worker and the current role of the artist, beyond the human caught in an eternal sigh (or lack of breath), tuning in towards a dialogic, considerate, next and rigorous space of an even closer (but other) entanglement of environmental interdependencies, which is inevitably where we are heading to. Or need to head to.

— benjamin schoones