NIKKI HOCK

The work takes two forms: that of a ‘plug and play’ installation that operates on its own and that of a performance work that happens within, and interacts with, the installation. The work emerges out of a dialogue between the audience, the space, and the elements. This dialogue requires a specific relationship between the audience and the space in order to achieve freedom of movement. The work is contained by a start and an end point, but everything in between is performed live, in real-time, and can shift at any moment—creating a responsive journey that is in constant dialogue.

As the performance unfolds, it carries the spectator from one emotional state to another. Through the use of installation-based and performative elements and sensory impulses, the spatial awareness and perception of the audience will be manipulated and new ‘spaces’ will be created in the performance environment which are not physically present but rather constructed by, and emerging from, the viewer’s imagination. This ensemble of elements and senses is part of a complex mechanical apparatus that is controlled and manipulated live. The overall composition is best understood as a fluctuating ‘organism’. All the components create an interplay out of which emerges an environment in which fear is exposed as an affective domain. There is no safe spot for the audience, only complete immersion in the space.

The work is built on the basis of scientific and sociological theories and research— among others Zygmunt Bauman, Paul Virilio and Luc H. Arnal—and uses new technological developments to examine this contemporary phenomenon and its operations. This performance illuminates this current social issue and the underlying social structures that create a society that lives in permanent insecurity.

For the YYOY performance, a space has been designed which immerses the viewer in an uncanny experience—a multi-sensory abstracted space that anticipates our feelings of anxiety. Artist Nikki Hock, along with performer Marijn Brussaard, accompany the audience through an increasingly obscured landscape of smell, image, color, light, temperature, and spatial sound, along a range of abstract and emotional layers to create an experience in which the audience is confronted with their own fear. The combination of elements hyper-stimulates the senses, creating an array of incoming information that the brain is not fully able to process.