I’m an artist based in Amsterdam. After highschool I studied photography
for one year at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the Hague, and following this
I studied Cultural Anthropology at the universities of Leiden and Amsterdam.
I finished this last study (cum laude) with a research investigating similarities
between Western advertising and magical/religious practises in so called ‘primitive’
societies (as described in anthropological literature).
During my study in Cultural Anthropology I learned to work with video and after
my study I started working for myself as a visual artist. Soon after this I
got interested in performance art. Different forms of dance/movement training
(among which body weather and Rob List's workshop) have been a source of inspiration
for me. I made a dance movie and different performances combining video with
movement or the physical presence of myself and others.
My artistic research goes almost always hand in hand with studying philosophical
literature. At the moment I am particularly interested in the issue of watching
a moving body versus watching an ‘image’ (whatever that may be).
A source of inspiration for this research is the work on ‘the split between
the eye and the gaze’ of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jacques Lacan.
I read their discussion of vision as an extension in the scopic field of Georges
Bataille’s fight with language in the ‘Inner Experience’.
A book that has kept me busy for years. (see for instance: The
Experience)
Bram Vreeswijk
A'dam, July 25, 2008