For the second exhibition in the Encounters series, Bernice Nauta presents multiple videos along with a couple of drawings, framed in recycled parts of scanners. The presentation will be on view this week during regular opening hours. Furthermore, on Thursday evening, the artist will be present from 18.00 until 20.00.
The short films are part an ongoing project by Bernice Nauta on the figure of the stunt double. The stunt double is a visible yet invisible body, a mostly uncredited worker on set who performs daring acts in the place of the star. Since the 1910s, Hollywood production companies began constructing actors into “stars” to increase their value on and off screen. This mechanism automatically introduced the stunt double; a replaceable crash-proof body. From her research, Bernice Nauta concluded that she would prefer to be her own stunt double, instead of using the Hollywoodesque, “star-factory, identity-commodifying methodology” of hiring a stunt double to perform the dirty and risky jobs of life.
Cast - Non Appearance
In Cast – Non Appearance, Nauta dissolves her identity into an actor who plays her part, allowing her to explore the self from the role of her own stunt double, falling into a parallel reality. Nauta re-enacts memories and scenes from everyday life that can be classified as stunts: moments involving fear, danger, and risk.
Ditch
In the spring of 2001 I went ditch jumping with my father, near my grandma’s home. I was almost eleven years old. First he jumped, then I jumped after him. When I landed, I broke my ankle. This is the first time I broke a bone. Last year, I figured that the reason this happened must have been because of the fact that I was abandoned by my stunt double. Why else would I have broken a bone? In 2022 I returned to the ditch and jumped it back and forth, attempting to provoke my lost stunt double to show up.
Works on paper
Since 2011 I have made A4 sized drawings. I’ve received critical comments about this size more than once. About it’s standardness. As an artist you might be expected to challenge standardness. I did not do so. I really like the A4 size. It was invented in 1922. Every human being is acquainted with it. The A4 is also quiet similar in size to the average human face. The human face is in that sense also standardized. A4 papers have relationships with many other objects,such as envelopes, ringbinders, hole punchers, printers, scanners, archives. Particularly scanners have caught my attention the past months. I found a lot of discarded scanners on the streets of The Hague and Amsterdam. I collected them and dismantled them, removing the back side of the machine. They became the frames for the drawings. The drawings are inside the scanner, and can be seen from the ‘inside’ of the machine.
