“Sitting is one of the greatest pleasures of walking.”
Dillon de Give, 2014
Ienke Kastelein is interested in transforming perception. She raises questions about when and how facts are transformed into fiction, and reality is perceived as a metaphor. Hence walking and sitting have become essential research methods
as well as performances. Public space is conceived as the studio and walking is approached as a performance in which participants are the actors as well!
as the spectators at! the same time, where as the behaviour of passers by is suddenly transformed into an extraordinary reality. Her approach can be perceived as!scenography of the street.
Kastelein started out as a photographer and has been shifting her attention towards reality itself using her camera merely to document. She is interested in the narrow boundary between ‘acting’ in real life and performance. She is especially interested in sitting and walking as a conscious way of being and as the actual sensitory experience. Her whole body of work is a research and a reflection on being present and presence itself.
She participated in AiOP FREE! 201 in 14th Street! NY with the project Have a seat on the sidewalk / walking with chairs, a participatory performance. In May she created the walk Very Very' Slow in the footsteps of Ursula for New Habits at CasCo projects Utrecht (NL) She participated in the Unnoticed Art Festival in Dordrecht (NL) and wrote a score for a solo performance by Annie Abrahams during the Performance Festival INTON'ACTION!#4!Angoulème!(FR). She wrote the score for a participatory performance Walking and sitting roundabout Hesterstreet, a walking! practice for Lu Magnus, NY, curated!by Catherine!Grau The Place the Space was a!research project in Circadit, Arnhem that questioned the space from a scenographic point of view, curated by Ronald de Ceuster. With Frans van Lent and Ieke Trinks and others she is working on a series of performances initiated by Frans van Lent titled the Parrallel Show. She is!involved in Unmaking the Netherlands a project by Expodium (2015). She is preparing a walk in the exhibition Hacking Habitat (2016) curated by Ine Gevers (Niet Normaal) In 2013 she was awarded the Boellaard prize.
