REMIX 2025
Last week Friday, I went to REMIX 2025 at Beeld & Geluid in Hilversum. It consists of inspiring artist talks, informative workshops and a showcase. The speakers are artists and filmmakers who process heritage and archive material in their own artistic practice in their own unique way.
I went to REMIX 2025 because 1. I am an artist-in-residence at Beeld & Geluid and I think it’s good to be involved in the spaces you’re working with 2. I was interested in the opening talk of the day, which featured a joint interview with Menno Otten & Aimée Zito Lema and was moderated by the brilliant Giya Makondo-Wills.
I was super fascinated by this entire talk, but what really resonated with me the most is the process of Menno Otten, when it comes to editing, selecting and rhythmically deciding what to place where in the edit and what makes sense. Feeling is a big parameter in his world. The reason why this resonates with me, is because nowadays - as an artist - I feel like I consistently need to speak everything to death, using words, using tools that very much take place in the head, instead of in the heart of the intuition space. I long for more of the heart and the intuition, and less of the head. And, simultaneously, I know that when (my) intuition & intellect strike a balance, (my) work becomes incredibly powerful. When I edit my Subtle Rush series, I always go off of feeling first before I layer in the intellect. I move between the head + the heart, so to speak, and this process is in synergy.
When I look at the works that I am most attracted to, it’s never because they are bathed in intellect and academics, it’s because they strike a feeling first. In my universe of creation, and as a human being, I am beginning to understand that feeling for me is much more important than what is being said — and I have had this since I was a young child. If a person or a situation didn’t feel right, I would not want to be around them - no matter the words were that were being said. I respond to body language / energy first and thén I analyse the words being spoken and analyse (subconsciously perhaps) how these match up. This is what for me creates a ‘feeling’ around a person, situation or a thing. Feelings transmit just as much, sometimes more, information as words or data. I think what should be specified, is that a feeling is not an emotion. A feeling is something that is transmitted from our emotions but then generated from our mental space.
Questions:
Why is an intellectual answer more valid than an intuitive one?
Why is a feeling not a fact? What makes a feeling a fact?
Why is the written, academic, word more valid than a gut feeling?
Are there systems for the intuition?
What is a feeling when you are looking at a piece of work?
How do you feel when you look at something? When you are with someone?
Is a work of art also a body? Just like a human body is also a work of art?
Anyway, here are my notes from that joint interview. They may or may not make sense to someone else (because I did not write down the entire context) but I know what they mean. I wrote down what I picked up on, what I thought was important in that moment to take with me, moving forward.
October 3, 2025 REMIX Notes
A remix often starts from something old
Reshaping history, while designing the future.
Newspaper, graphic design
How the pages were created, lightbox, collage
Drawers that you can open
Photocopy, machine, reproduction
The things that form your vision vs. the way you end up working
Printing, layering
Obscure material
Sitting or sleeping material
VHS
Bring into the work what you like + love
Bringing together images + bringing it back to the music
How we document changes
How rapidly things move
Social memory, collective memory
Social memory vs the personal
Photographic archives
Pictures are carriers of memory
What are the things that were present in your upbringing?
Object of a memory / object of an event
Passing on (working with archives)
The Subversive Body (Installation)
Physicality / scale
Transformation of material
Archival material as raw material
Using archive as you would use paint
Imprinted Matter, 2017
The physical body of the person looking at the work
Breaking [or forming] material
Transformation as a discipline
Intuitive raw instinct rather than logic or what might look good
The physicality! Emotion!
Quick edit, moving along with edit
What is the universal language?
Collective It can make the physical universal. Universality.
The imagination, in time + scale
Making descisions as a baseline This will determine the world + feeling of your work
What do you concentrate on?
The human emotion
Emergent patterns & putting them together can expose universality
Taking out context
Human emotion
Crossing space + time
Time traveler transmission???
How does a time traveler transmit?
Familiarity + recognition?
Confusions & chaos
Descending into ourselves, what do we have in common?
How do you vehicle something in?
Structure ————— how do you structure the universe + time?
The body is always present
How do was pass on experiences?
What is passed on without words?
Experiences, secrets.
FOCUS - need a strong starting point in order to build + contextualize the work in a way that is powerful
How to use your position + body as a tool
Memory challenging
Transformation, passing things one.
Evolve + develop
Body language as relatable materials
Rhythm as hypnotism / controlling the rhythm
Physical sensation
Rhythmical + clear cut through embodiment
Avoid logical cutting
Attention through rhythmic specificity
What does history mean?
Relation of time
Decontextualizing work
You have to take material out of collective memory
Ownership / copyright!
Using material that has no copyright
Archives are public
Open source archives
Don’t skip steps!
Organize everything yourself!
Know your material!
Connective material
“It’s just a feeling. It’s just a feeling.” , From "Nina: "A Historical Perspective", a documentary produced by Peter Rodis in 1970.
25-010Text, Video
10-10-2025