Springtime, 2010-2011, 35mm to HD, black and white, silent, 19 min, 5 sec, Cahir, Co Tipperary, Ireland

I was covered with 150, 000 bees and I was stung thirty times. I did not feel any pain. Except towards the end when I was stung on my eyelids. I felt resistance up to a certain moment, but after a while I let it go and surrendered to the experience. I think I must have entered a state of trance at some point. I started to feel completely empty inside and entered a state of complete freedom. Towards the end I only heard the beating of my heart and my own breathing.

My work like many artworks throughout Netherlandish art history is about pain, suffering, decay, death and failure. But it also has ties to the Romantic tradition involving a quest for Beauty, a peculiar realm of solitude, a fascination with extreme experiences and dreamlike visions or journeys within, sometimes despite the harrowing aspects of Nature, and all of these as a means of redemption, spirituality and illumination. Springtime originated from the idea of writing. I think writing is very exciting. Maybe even more so than climbing Mount Everest. But meanwhile you’re physically sitting at a table and nothing much seems to happen from the outside. I wanted to visualize this paradox. The bees were a metaphor for words. I think it’s magical and miraculous that thoughts can be sent from your head down through your arm and into your hand, and you’re able to plot those little signs down on paper for someone else –even a complete stranger!- to be able to read and understand and even more than that; to evoke the same feelings and emotions in that person, which originally caused you to write down those words. It also works the other way around; because of words you can think thoughts that otherwise would never have occurred to you. Sometimes I sit down and writing seems to come by itself, almost automatically. Then I write without asking myself if it’s good or not. When I’m ready there’s a perfectly constructed story, which I could never have figured out rationally. I imagine those kinds of moments to be most precious to a writer. Without words you cannot think. You even need words to be able to think about images. Without words one would only think in vague feelings. Similar to a baby, who is only able to react with primal impulses because it is unable to use language. So words are very useful and extremely important. But of course words can also be dangerous and they can overwhelm you. Just like the bees have overwhelmed me. At the end of the film, once I have been completely enveloped in bees, I become indistinguishable from my background, I have disappeared; that’s a sort of dust to dust and ashes to ashes and fear of death type of moment. And then, when I’m only able to sit still and look out at the world, unable to interfere or to do anything about anything, I try not to forget the sacred spark of the soul, which is still burning somewhere inside this amorphous creature, which is me.


behind the scenes