State Of Cling

State of Cling
door Syzygy_collective

(*)
State of Cling is het moment waarop dingen bij elkaar komen en op hun plek vallen, gepaard gaand met een hoge klank, scherp en breekbaar, om samen te resoneren.

State of Cling was tevens de titel van de groepstentoonstelling onder curatorschap van Syzygy_collective die plaatsvond van 15 januari t/m 13 februari 2022. Syzygy_collective is een collectief van drie generaties vrouwelijke kunstprofessionals die hun krachten hebben gebundeld: Brieke Drost, Sibylle Eimermacher en Mireille Tap. De naam Syzygy slaat op het moment waarop drie hemellichamen zich in een rechte lijn ten opzichte van elkaar bevinden en beïnvloeden, zoals tijdens een zonsverduistering. Als collectief zijn ze toegewijd aan het intuïtieve, intieme, zachte en  verbindende. Kwetsbaarheid zien ze als kracht!

Voor deze groepstentoonstelling nodigde Syzygy_collective kunstenaars uit die hun waarden delen binnen concepten, materialiteit, beeldtaal en gebaar om op deze manier de verbinding met elkaar aan te gaan. Een gezamenlijke krachtsinspanning die uiteindelijk heeft geleidt naar een State of Cling. (*)

Met:
Ana Navas
Brieke Drost
Hanna Mattes
Janne Schimmel
Mireille Tap & Thomas Bürger
Mitchel Peters
Niamh Porter
Nora Aurrekoetxea
Sibylle Eimermacher & Iwan Boverhof

Tekst by Romy Day Winkel 
(published in State of Cling magazine)

The main character of this story, or the “I”, 
has learned about cling via her father breaking 
his thumb by getting it stuck in a motorcycle 
chain, permanently reshaping its top, which, 
much later, turned out to be convenient for 
holding. She learned about cling because her 
best friend mocks her high pitched voice by 
imitating it (especially when saying ‘hi’) as 
well as touching used chewing gum. There are 
accidents that end up being stickier than 
previously thought, like my father’s thumb 
that, in its bulging op top, turned out to 
be convenient for holding, or a piece of 
velcro that also clings onto dust and animal 
hair, the same way in which black velvet 
pants or black pants in general can become a 
space for gathering all sorts of small fibres, 
specs of a fluffy blanket, animal hair again. 
There’s unplanned pregnancies that stay, 
there’s heat produced by hot water bottles, 
heat that is stuck between the soil and the 
ozone. There are all these states of cling 
that are accidental and my impression is that 
it needs to be. Cling, now, as permanent 
insulation.

My father placed the object                here
                                but as soon
                           as I was born      
                           it fell off
                 the cabinet

  
            and took this
         shape and location

It was a mirroring object: both in form (a 
mirror frame) and in content (my father 
looked a lot like his father).

I guess mirrors run in our family.

The last gift I received from my aunt is a 
music box playing Bach when wound up. It is 
shaped like a cilinder, covered in small 
pieces of mirror. As a child, it functioned 
as a soundtrack to dramatic gazes outside my 
room’s window; performing for an invisible 
audience of emphatic onlookers; “what a 
profound gaze she has”, I hoped they would say. 
It was raining outside, I just texted my crush, 
etc.

At the time, I had a friend, I will call her R, 
with who I always used to play out two 
scenarios: we either started our own gallery 
in the living room, marking the items with an 
imaginary interested buyer with a red dot, or 
we would write and star in a play. My aunt’s 
gift had a dramatic role in, what later turned 
out to be, our last performance.

We were figuring out the logistics of our play 
in the living room of R’s parent’s house. What 
made this room comfortable was the soundtrack 
of my aunt’s music box playing in the
background and the dramatic looking out of the 
window in the final scene. Other than that there 
were many new factors: there was an actual 
audience, namely our parents and R’s aunt 
chatting in the garden, and there was a co-star. 
I held onto the symmetries: R and I both having 
dark brown hair, both having a name starting 
with the letter R, both with divorced parents.

It was time for our first rehearsal. R told me 
to wind up the music box. I kept holding onto 
it as this became part of my character in the 
play. The performance would end on me running 
outside, removing the music box from stage as 
the final dramatic gesture of the separation 
of two sisters in a complex family relationship. 
I ran towards the glass door which I assumed to 
be open, but instead I ran through it. I ran 
through it and the glass broke into thousands 
of little pieces. For a moment I was laying 
there, looking at my hands. I heard R’s aunt 
crying. The music box fell next to me and fit 
in so well with its small covering in mirrors.

Later on I lied to my father and said the sun 
was obstructing my gaze as it reflected in the 
music box. I also told him there was a piece 
of glass in my eye but that I didn’t want to 
say at the time in order to not scare him. I 
said I had plucked it out of my eye with 
tweezers when I went to the bathroom later.
In that bathroom: the broken mirror frame 
with a picture of my father’s father. I felt 
like he was judging me for lying. Both ‘he’, 
my grandpa represented by his picture, and 
‘he’, my father looking so much like his, 
and ‘me’ represented in broken mirror frame, 
knew there was no piece of glass in my eye. 
Cling, again, as permanent insulation.

State Of Cling kwam tot stand met ondersteuning van :