Author Archives: Frans van Lent

Nieuwstraat Festival

The Nieuwstraat is an average street in the city center of Dordrecht, the Netherlands.
The Nieuwstraat Festival took place on an undisclosed day in 2020 (June 20), between sunrise and midnight. The performances were carried out by volunteers, unannounced and with no explanation.
Taking place in everyday settings, the performances involve hiding the unusual within the usual. Passersby perceived the actions, but might not have recognised them as performance art.

The program consisted of works by:
Annie Abrahams
Karina Beumer
Jessica van Deursen
Guillaume Dufour Morin
Ienke Kastelein
Jonathon Keats
Laura Hyunjhee Kim
Stefan Klein
Frans van Lent
Deirdre MacLeod
Javier Mansilla
Maria Martens Serrano
Andrew McNiven
Janet Meaney
Nico Parlevliet
Mikio Saito
Elia Torrecilla
Albert van der Weide
Kamila Wolszczak
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A Scene #22: Double

On Saturday 23 May 2020 at 2:20 PM (CEST), I will be standing in the middle of the food market at Statenplein, Dordrecht, the Netherlands (5148.8870 N, 00440.1692 E).
I look around until I recognise someone, and while I am looking at this person I grab my phone and call him/her to ask how things are. After a while, I will make clear that I am within visual distance, stop the conversation and raise my arm to say goodbye. I leave the market.

Silences

I invited twenty artists to make a ten minutes long audio recording of Silence.
Each one of them decided where, how and in what conditions they wanted to do this.
I superimposed all submitted recordings as layers into one combined file.
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¿Cuánto es 1km?

This day, May 2, 2020, the first day after a 40-day Corona-quarantine, residents of Spain will be allowed to go out for sporting or hiking on fixed time slots. This is only permitted within a radius of one km from home.
The Spanish government opened a website (https://1km.geomatico.es) where residents can find exactly what this means concerning their own situation.
On this website I discovered where a comparable circle would reach, starting from my home in the Netherlands, in case our government applied the same rules.
Elia Torrecilla and I agreed to take a parallel walk. Continue reading →

Call III

Some time ago I published an open invitation to call me on Friday, May 1, between 1 PM and 2 PM (CEST).
That first day in May I walked in a rural area in the southwest of the Netherlands.
When the phone rang I did not answer the call. Instead I took a picture of what I was looking at on that moment.
I then sent that picture to the number that appeared on my phone. I sent 48 photos.

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Level

Two 30 minute digital audio recordings of the North Sea,
made simultaneously (16:00 UTC, 23.04.2020)
on the East coast of Scotland, (56° N.);
and on the West coast of the Netherlands (52° N.).
Synchronised and mixed together into one stereo file.

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A Chair as Any Other

performed at the
WHAT REMAINS festival
February 22, 2020
DfbrL8r, ARC Gallery,
Chicago, IL

For nine years the red folding chair was a defining object in the DfbrL8r-archives.
In those years the chair was used in at least five performances of different artists.
I decided to find it a new home, to take it away from the spotlights
and to bring it to a place where it could lose its artistic background
and become the mundane object it was meant to be.

In the performance I read a text explaining the process and results.

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A Scene #21

On Saturday, April 11 2020, from 2:00 till 2:30 PM (CEST) I will be pacing up and down between the iron gate and the front door of the studio building Singel 222, Dordrecht (51.8085854, 4.6706976).
Please, keep your distance!

A Scene #20

On Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 2:20 PM (CET) I was standing in the aisle of a flying Boeing 767-300, between the Netherlands and Iceland. With my eyes closed, my arms beside my body, I was for 15 minutes contemplating the enormity of the ocean below.

In memory of Antoinette Reuten.

The Second Night of Experimental Boredom
222lodge, Singel 222, 3311 KV Dordrecht (NL)
January 17, 2020, 20:00 PM
Free entrance

The Second Night of Experimental Boredom is not about boring art.
It is about boredom as a subject for art, boredom as a first step in the creative process.

The Second Night of Experimental Boredom is an initiative of Unnoticed Art and 222lodge.