13 march 2023, Wouter van den Eijkel
The studio of... Julie van der Vaart
Gallery Wilms is now showing a duo exhibition by Ronald Zuurmond and Julie van der Vaart. Two artists who challenge our perception of time and space Inspired by ideas from Stephen Hawking and sci-fi novels from the 1950s, Julie van der Vaart slides various moments in time on top of each other and lets them flow together. A conversation about the use of science fiction, depersonalisation and imaginary time.
Where is your studio?
A little bit everywhere. I collect images in the world: outdoors, while walking, traveling, during a shoot with a model at his/her home. I have a darkroom at home where I can develop negatives, make prints and experiment, a storage place for my works, a desk in the living room where I can work, hang up tests, the garden where I read.
I regularly use workshops to perform more specific techniques, for example for my latest project “Black Cloud” I made my photo etchings at the Jan van Eyck academy in Maastricht and the woven works in the textile lab of the textile museum in Tilburg.
Your solo exhibition at Galerie Wilms was named after The Black Cloud, a science fiction novel by Fred Hoyle from 1957. What is the overlap between the book and your work?
In The Black Cloud, a huge cloud of gas has drifted from the depths of the universe towards our solar system, appearing to halt its journey between the Sun and Earth, blocking sunlight and threatening to wipe out life on Earth. The story is about the scientists studying the gas cloud, its "behaviour" is unpredictable and thus comes the hypothesis that the gas cloud could be a form of life. The scientists find out that the cloud has a consciousness and they try to communicate with it. The gas cloud turns out to be as old as the universe itself.
What I find inspiring is this different view of what life could be. Often when we imagine extra-terrestrial life it has a similar shape to humans, but in the story the gas cloud is just as surprised that life can arise on a massive, solid planet. It integrates me that this alien life has no fixed form, but it does have a consciousness, a history, a story. For me, depersonalisation often feels like I'm stepping outside my body, like my "I" isn't bound by my skin.
Can you explain what depersonalisation is?
With depersonalisation you feel as if you are outside yourself and reality, as if you are not real yourself, as if you are in a dream. This “feel as if” is very important here. When you look in the mirror you don't recognize the person emotionally, you don't feel anything about it, there is a form of dissociation, but you do know who that person is. As with other experiences, you know what is real and what is not, but it all doesn't feel real. To me it feels like my “I” is not limited, like I am outside my body, which is why in my work bodies often seem to dissolve, or seem to have no clear boundary.
Important elements in your work are the concepts of linear and imaginary time and the difference between them. How did you come to this topic and why does this theme appeal to you?
Especially imaginary time, which equates to non-linear time, is important to me. The linear time, time as we usually visualize and experience it, is less interesting for me and my work. During my second master “Research in Art and Design” (2014-2015) I read a lot about the universe and about time, I also followed an online astrophysics course and I started to collect information about different views of time. When I came up with the concept of imaginary time, it all fell into place for me. I came across that in Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. In imaginary time past, present and future are present at the same time and it is a matter of where you put your attention.
As a 3-dimensional being, I cannot escape linear time, I am getting older, not younger. Maybe by meditation, by being consciously in the “now” you can escape it, because the “now” is eternal, but when I open my eyes again I will be a bit older again unfortunately. I wondered, what if our experience of time is not real, but a result of a limitation? Perhaps similarly my experience of “going outside my body” is not strange at all, but rather a doorway to something else.
I read that you have a strong preference for analogue photography. In your opinion, what advantage does analogue technology have over the digital process?
For me, analogue photography allows me to be more in the moment at the time of shooting, because I'm limited in number of photos I can take, so I work more focused, more in the moment because everything after that, for me, is done with my hands: developing, printing, or scanning and then translating it into fabric, etching, or screen prints. When creating, you already make the choices: carrier, format, contrast. Working digitally offers enormous possibilities and artists do great things with it, but for me the analogue works better now. It will also have to do with the depersonalization, that I can be busy with something concrete, I have the material in my hands and work with my hands, which brings me to the here and now.
Galerie Wilms calls you a photographic artist, now photographers invariably work in series and often think in books, for painters it is different. To which category do you consider yourself to be in?
I think “photographic artist” is a great term, but maybe that term also limits me somehow. My starting point has always been a photographic image, but after that I will work with it using different techniques. I myself work in series, because it brings me peace, it gives me something to hold on to: a beginning and an end. This is at odds with my non-linear story, but I still need that grip, the feeling of finishing something and moving on. My works do flow into each other and can be combined again, I see them more as chapters of a larger story than as separate series.
Last November your monograph was published by VOIDTo which blind spot does the title refer and what is in the book?
The book consists of three series: Beyond Time, Deep Time & Waterfall. It is about different views on time and whether the way in which we experience time and reality is real or an illusion. Hence the title: the blind spot on our retina is filled in for us by our brains, which gives us the illusion of a complete image, but that image is a guess based on the information surrounding that blind spot.
