HINKYPUNK at Billytown

Artists: Anders Dickson, Maja Klaassens, Clémence de La Tour du Pin, Kim David Bots

Exhibition title: HINKYPUNK

Venue: Billytown, The Hague, The Netherlands

Date: November 29, 2019 – February 1, 2020

Photography: Jhoeko and Kim David Bots / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Billytown, The Hague

In 1917 Norman Beckenbaum wrote the classic tale of the ‘rat-robot’, the man made up completely out of rodents of the rat variety. Perfectly imitating human flatness, moving through the highest of social classes, rising to the ranks of army oﬃcer and leading thousands of men into battle, discarding its humanoid form at the ‘moment suprême’; hundred-plus rats escaping into holes, craters and cracks as the battlefield is torn apart by mortar-fire, only to reemerge after the carnage has past. Feasting on the dismembered half-alive remains of the soldiers.

Closing his eyes Steve tried to concentrate on the boundary between his skin and the air. This was a trick he had picked up from Jane. By confronting the ambiguous line separating flesh from air his mind would be free to swell in scape. Like a balloon taking air, he could feel his consciousness growing and enveloping everything in his immediate surroundings. He swept over the ground, taking in benches, tables, fences, even the meandering cattle grazing on their alfalfa. He imagined all which came before his outward speeding mind to be covered by a gelatinous membrane: a conscious grokking goo. It observed, digested and metabolized the objects. Each of which was then categorized and filed into the proper genus, kingdom, or family.

Dead leaves blow in through the windows while I’m at work. I find their crusty shells lodged behind the gas pipe. My vacuum cleaner just can’t take it so I remove them one by one with an index finger and thumb, thinking about potato chips.

This exhibition is a collective project by Anders Dickson, Maja Klaassens, Clémence de La Tour du Pin, and Kim David Bots. Over the course of a two week period, an amalgamation of diﬀerent material comes together in an installation focusing on the multi-layered notion of the swamp. HINKYPUNK, a colloquial term originating in Somerset, England, refers to the mysterious lights seen in swamps that appear as a result of gasses spontaneously combusting.