A CONVERSATION with Kristof Van Gestel

WELCOME FOR A CONVERSATION! WHAT IS A CONVERSATION? at http://www.playgroundfestival.be/en/program/welcome-conversation-what-conversation

"Kristof Van Gestel invites you for an individual talk, through his artworks. Some ten sculptures/objects form the base of an exploration of form, content, interpretation, perception and use of art. The starting point is the way the audience responds to the artworks and the way the artist responds to the audience. By turning audience members into active participants, he provokes experiences that are close to life."

This artwork is part of: Knowing by Doing, a platform for research on participative art projects and experience-oriented workshops that was founded by Van Gestel based on his own practice.

before

I arrived at the empty room with only few objects gathered in one corner and was asked to display them all over the room, as I wanted to.

DETERMINISM <> CHANCE

Chance arouses from something determined only up to a certain extent.

In this case determinism was give by the choices of the artist when defining the rules for the experience as well as the objects to be integrated, whilst chance belonged to the visitor who would

phenomenological experiences of the environment embodiment and communication

new stories emerge. objects as points of contact and transformation

body as situated knowledge: the body as a site of knowledge, as an accretion of understanding a practice where meaning intersects with the world. This experience made me think of how the interplay between determinism and chance may lead to an "ecology of creativity".

While moving the objects from one place to another, I started asking Kristof what were those objects,

after