C.02

Five years ago, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the human body was the subject of endless headlines: the site of the disease, and the mediator between a microscopic virus and invisible global borders. The medicalization of society was made clear during this period. Our faces were required to be masked with synthetic fabrics. As society, we recalibrated from thinking at the scale of architecture to the scale of the individual—from building a shelter in the form of a house to a shelter in the form of a second skin, clothing. We were living in a dystopia, melting together environments, biology, and technology. Long before the pandemic, Dutch body architect and craftsman Bart Hess has already been imagining these dystopias for us.

Bart is a new generation of interdisciplinary artists reinventing practice in the 21st century. His work is a mirror of his philosophy on blurriness; he shifts mediums between film, sculpture, fashion, and materiality. Bart’s practice tells the tale of how our bodies, already ancient machines, are shaped by the environments we live in—by absorbing microplastics, for example—or reshaped through a state of evolution driven by contemporary technology, such as prosthetics and gene editing. Drawing inspiration from the world around him, the relationship between the human body and the artificial is one that is both deeply disturbing and poetic.

On a virtual Friday morning in Chicago time and evening in Eindhoven time, I sit down with Bart Hess over Zoom to discuss his practice. Bart sits in a cozy timber-clad kitchen adjacent to a rooftop garden with sunset spilling into the room. We discuss craft in the age of AI, dystopian futures, the perils of fashion and tech, analog inspirations, sustainable practices, and his personal relationship with clothing.

Five years ago, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the human body was the subject of endless headlines: the site of the disease, and the mediator between a microscopic virus and invisible global borders. The medicalization of society was made clear during this period. Our faces were required to be masked with synthetic fabrics. As society, we recalibrated from thinking at the scale of architecture to the scale of the individual—from building a shelter in the form of a house to a shelter in the form of a second skin, clothing. We were living in a dystopia, melting together environments, biology, and technology. Long before the pandemic, Dutch body architect and craftsman Bart Hess has already been imagining these dystopias for us.

Bart is a new generation of interdisciplinary artists reinventing practice in the 21st century. His work is a mirror of his philosophy on blurriness; he shifts mediums between film, sculpture, fashion, and materiality. Bart’s practice tells the tale of how our bodies, already ancient machines, are shaped by the environments we live in—by absorbing microplastics, for example—or reshaped through a state of evolution driven by contemporary technology, such as prosthetics and gene editing. Drawing inspiration from the world around him, the relationship between the human body and the artificial is one that is both deeply disturbing and poetic.

On a virtual Friday morning in Chicago time and evening in Eindhoven time, I sit down with Bart Hess over Zoom to discuss his practice. Bart sits in a cozy timber-clad kitchen adjacent to a rooftop garden with sunset spilling into the room. We discuss craft in the age of AI, dystopian futures, the perils of fashion and tech, analog inspirations, sustainable practices, and his personal relationship with clothing.

Marya Kanakis: Your work is a great entry point for interpreting the relationship between architecture and the body, thinking about fashion or even our skin, as the minimum possible shelter of humans. It actually influenced my own professional path—I shifted my focus to fashion when I applied to grad school, in part because of your work.

Bart Hess: Wow, great.

MK: And I’ve always been drawn to your perspective on the future, especially in relation to where technology and innovation are headed. There is this one quote I often think about where the author points out all these bodily enhancement technologies that exist in the world today (think LASIK surgery, plastic surgery, pacemakers, prosthetics, and so on) to paint the picture that the cyborg is an artifact of modern technology. Your costumes and installations are very cyborgian, no? How do you situate your work in relation to recent developments in bioengineering?

BH: I think that many of these medical achievements or technological advancements are referenced in my work. Perhaps not in a direct way, but I reference that feeling of an object, or a material, becoming one with the body and fusing into a larger body. I find it very fascinating when a material and a body are in a state of symbiosis or parasitic relationship. In my practice, the challenge is to also somehow look for the extreme in that, such as selecting materials that are even farther from the natural makeup of the body. Then I investigate how to manipulate that material in a way that it becomes one with the body, and then, very literally, how to make it a reality.

MK: Can you elaborate on the thinking that goes behind making your sculptures and costumes a reality?

BH: How you place it on the body matters. And when you think about how to make that into a reality for a performance, for a photo shoot or a dance, it becomes almost like costume design. Maybe scientists come up with a new invention every month, and then sometimes they don't even have any imagery of what they’ve achieved in the labs yet. My mind immediately goes ‘Oh yeah, this material is great!’ or ‘I can visualize this invention this way.’

MK: As if you are imagining what a cyborg should look like?

BH: Definitely. Many times I feel like I am creating a superhero of sorts, a state of a kind of awkward superhuman that has been empowered by some sort of parasite.

MK: In the same way, we could argue we are empowered by modern technology. Phones for example are already an extension of our brains, of our bodies. Have you ever heard of Mindy? Someone envisioned how humans will look like a few generations from now as we start to evolve with all these technologies - extended thumbs, ‘tech neck’, and so on. Her creators named her Mindy.

BH: Okay, I’ve heard of this! That's amazing.

MK: It’s an interesting provocation to explore. In a way, it is mirroring reality back into your perceptions of these human- made objects and natural bodies in one.

BH: Yeah! I love this. Many times, the effect that my materials or designs have on the body is something I don't really calculate from the beginning. Similar to how we’ve arrived at Mindy. Often, I test the effects of materials on myself first, because I always start working on my own body. I like having the material introduce some physical constraints, as this makes me behave differently. You try to interact normally with the design, but this thing makes you move differently without overthinking it. I find that nice, a sort of honest approach. When I'm working with models or dancers who are wearing my designs, I just ask, ‘what emotion comes up?’ My intent is also designing the state of body morphing.

MK: I can almost see your work as a dystopian premonition of the time to come…

BH: I'm unconsciously drawn to dystopias. I often dream about the world ending and stuff like that, but during the day, I believe I'm a positive person who is asking, ‘how can this improve our world?’ Still, somewhere along the day I fear that we will fuck everything up. What attracts me to this topic is that it could go either way. I imagine a future where we all evolve, but at some point, something goes wrong. Then all these creatures emerge that interact with our craziness but are somehow empowered by it. They are not necessarily flying in the sky, but exist underground, like a worm. You wouldn't say it's necessarily pleasant.

MK: Poetically grotesque. As you describe that, I imagine a Hieronymus Bosch painting or some biomechanical being created from the movie Alien.

MK: Your work elicits very emotional reaction across all ages. I remember you once shared stories on your Instagram account, where children had written postcards to you in crayon, reviewing your work. It felt so genuine, as they weren't adding other layers that adults would have thought about. Do you design with an emotional outcome in mind, or does that become apparent only when the work is complete?

BH: I prefer to start a project with no outcome whatsoever. It’s just me, or a small team, we don't have a brief, we just play. And then something comes up, and we have to trust that at a later moment, the why behind the project will start to make sense. It always feels like just random luck when two years later, a choreographer or curator comes up to me with a question that I’ve already made. I love that.

MK: I’d like to about how you communicate work, because I imagine that you run into constraints with exhibition methods or platforms for your pieces, given that so much in them is about movement and time. Do you see potential in new technologies such AI, VR, AR, as devices for presenting your work?

BH: I actually experimented with VR one year ago for the first time when I made a film called ‘Wave’. I developed it through the interaction of the body with materials, as if the body was a sort of tool and material itself. I generally start my projects developing materials that are real, and I can adhere to bodies. Then it's important that I somehow capture it digitally through photography, film, or another medium. And finally, the challenge is somehow not losing the tactility of the piece and have it come across in my films, even if the material is not there anymore—because it’s melted, decayed, or withered. But with VR, you have more opportunities to communicate the work to the audience. In Wave for example, it allows the observer to be visually in control of time and act almost as a director of the dancers’ movements, and I think that’s something interesting.

MK: It sounds like you are making your work available to more people through a much more individualistic experience, rather than a one-size-fits-all exhibition strategy. This might feel more welcoming to someone who isn't an artist, for example, and can interact with the piece. It is also a way to expand the access to your work beyond the gallery’s walls, opening it up to a world-wide audience?

BH: Exactly. Also, because if you're only interested in feet, or hands, or eyes, then you just watch that. It's your choice and I like that.

MK: Your work blurs the lines across many mediums and disciplines, and I’ve noticed how diverse platforms categorize your work differently. Is there a classification you’d rather use to describe your work and what you do?

BH: Ugh. I am rethinking this daily. I find myself framing my answer depending on who’s asking the question. The easiest answer for people is to say that I'm a ‘fashion costume designer,’ and then I can just start combining words for myself that also make sense. Lucy [McRae] and I always talked about being ‘Body Architects’, combining different disciplines that work together. But I feel that there is never a term that I am really happy about, that's why it's still so spread out online.

MK: I think that ‘Body Architect’ suits the work pretty well, because even when you're not re-imagining how the body could look like, you are still designing as if the surroundings would be an extension of the body. I’m thinking about the chair that you designed, ‘Latex Lovers’ for Palais de Tokyo, for example.

BH: What’s important for me is the state of in-betweenness at any of these scales. Back in the day, I was inspired by these grotesque images from the 1700's and 1800’s, that show objects blurred into humans, into architecture. I love these paintings and how everything melts together in one piece. And then I thought, how can I make these paintings into a physical reality.

MK: You mentioned that you were working with your own body. When did you start thinking this way?

BH: I always dressed up when I was a child. I really enjoyed putting stuff on my head, like a chair upside down [and trying to attach that to my body]. I think this curiosity never stopped. I'd also think, ‘I'm very good at this as well’. It felt as if a client gave me materials to work with and I would just know how to build with it, produce a particular tension, and make it interesting.

[As a child] I didn't speak at all, only to my sister. I just didn't want to. I think one develops on different levels when we don't speak [with words]. Many times, I think about speaking through my work, which I realize is about hiding the face a lot. I really don't know why, but that always happens, so you can only see the emotion of the material through the expression of the body, not the facial expression. I think the first time that I noticed that I could do it was in collaboration with Lucy. She has a dance background, I don't. We then both discovered how we could make interesting images with our bodies and materials.

MK: That’s interesting, especially now that the face is becoming a sort of site of public domain, in this age of bio-surveillance and biometrics…

BH: Yeah, and of sharing your face on digital platforms, it's all about the face and expression and how can we communicate? And we can in other ways.

MK: Do you think it's something that you have to hold back when you have a virtual presence?

BH: Yeah, it's funny. I like to do that a lot. But on the other hand, I think I'm always quite open and honest. I don't feel I have to hide something, but I love the visuals of hiding stuff. Morphing and becoming half somebody else.

MK: Like a chimera, where you are always between two states.

BH: Yeah, I think that I really discovered the state of being somewhere in between. I do that a lot in my private life, and I'm very good at it. Some people hate me for it. I really liquify between plans and if it changes, I don't care! And I think I literally made it into an art form for myself. So, you know, I like liquid bodies. I myself morph, and maybe because I try also to be that person as well… to move around opinions of people and not being too outspoken.

MK: I'll shift to the emphasis of technology in your work for a bit. I was hesitant to talk about AI because everyone's asking about it right now. But there was one little headline that I saw that made me want to bring this up with you. H&M was one of the first fashion brands to replace physical models with AI digital twins, and it made me think about, first, the intellectual copyright of your face, but also, how technology is kind of accelerating these things. And your work is very much one-off in nature, it is not specifically meant to be replicated at scale. So, I'm curious to see how you see the impact of AI on your work.

BH: Well, one impact is that people now read my work differently. People will assume that my work is created with AI and that is the total opposite of what I'm trying to do. I am really analog, but I also really enjoy this digital glitch vibe. Even my work from twenty years back, based on how it looks, people could say they were generated with AI. So, you almost want to have a statement saying that this is not created with AI even though it looks very digitally manipulated—dream-like blurriness and all sorts of translations that are now in video AI.

BH: And while I do understand why people think it's generated with AI, this is a bit sad sometimes because so much effort went into making this precise thing move this way. But people shouldn't like my work only because of how much energy went into it, that's not the point. They should in fact feel it. I don't think it's bad that they think it's easy to create it with AI.

MK: You mentioned that you're a very analog person. How do you find inspiration? Maybe music or films?

BH: My inspiration comes from the process of working in the studio. You open a drawer, you pick something random, you start working, and something magical will happen in that flow. Two hours later, you have something. I almost get into a state of trance while work is being created. I also find inspiration in music, maybe more than films. I like to work with a total score of one film and then play it in a loop for the whole day, until people go crazy! And then looking at leaves, insects, a lot of flowers, trees—how things grow. I really find that fascinating. I think the flow of this is important because it references ‘liquidity.’ That's always in my work. It's also in my work process.

MK: I was thinking about the temporality and ephemerality of some of the materials that you use, such us for the slime pieces. How is it to design with a type of material that is always changing or evolving?

BH: Yeah, it's a good question. I like temporary materials. You have to be a craftsman of sorts to work with these materials. But it's also all about making mistakes. At the same time, you can't make too many mistakes. You have to be precise, but also let the material do its own thing. Not all my work is temporary. Curators don't really like it when everything disappears! So, then my work questions ‘how can I have the feeling that this might dissolve or explode but it stays on display?’. This is a new challenge I find myself thinking about.

BH: Lately, I've been doing a lot of costume design for operas, ballets, and theaters, and this is the opposite of temporary material performance—you have to be practical, it has to endure, it has to sweat, and you have to wash it. It has to be sturdy, and it should be able to stretch. My older years of practice, compared to my younger years, have focused on opposite themes, hopefully not losing the magic, which is hard.

MK: I think the way you use the word ‘craftsman’ is interesting because a lot of people sit on either end of this argument. One opinion is that, with technology, craftsmen accelerate their process or attention to detail. On the other end of the argument people say that craft, as we’ve historically known it through our ancestors, is being lost. In both instances, making is the process of thinking. Maybe the role of the craftsman is still there, but it's just that the tools are changing. Do you have an instinct for this?

BH: Absolutely. It's only evolving. Even in the start, with new technology, you think, ‘okay, now craft is getting lost’. Look at Chat GPT prompt writers, they are almost poets. It's a craft in itself, and it is not easy to do this effectively. I'm not good with words, but I am fascinated when I see someone working very delicately with AI in text. If you just use AI randomly, I wouldn't say that you are a craftsman. Then it's nothing.

MK: This reminds me of this term in art history, ekphrasis. Have you ever heard of it?

BH: No.

MK: It's when a visual art is translated into a written literary piece. But by extending this logic, it is a device or tool that catalyzes a change in state between two mediums: when a myth is translated into a painting or when a painting is translated into a novel, or a play is translated into a painting. It’s like this state of back and forth between different mediums.

BH: I often reference my own performances that influence me again and again. For example, I start by making a textile, which then inspires me to evolve the piece into a film. The best projects are able to do a full circle. There was one project that almost ticked all the boxes off, of possible outputs it could take.

MK: Which project is that?

BH: In ‘Digital Artifacts’, there is this performance where I place a human body into liquid, that in the end became an installation, and a film. It was also turned into a textile later on. Sometimes, I can look back at my own work and think, ‘okay, this project is an installation, but what if this becomes a performance?’ and so on.

MK: Your work embraces both low-tech—think the tools of a craftsman—and high tech—think computers. How is the interaction of the two in your design process?

BH: In many projects, I design my own tools to produce certain outcomes. You start by doing it with your own hands, in an almost caveman-like way. Then you see the number of whateverness that you have to do, and then you develop tools to achieve this. So it starts very low tech, but it gets high tech along the way. Right now I am designing tools to clean the tools, and it is almost like creating a factory based around this one thing. Sometimes the tools look really funny, and how we then start dressing to produce it and so on, this all becomes very performative as well.

MK: That sounds very interesting! Where do you see fashion and technology going in the future? Is this a concern to you?

BH: Fashion is a big inspiration of mine. From looking at all the new collections and shows, to studying the performances of fashion. At least right now, here in the Netherlands, a majority of fashion is really the same. More than ever, you see an army of youngsters looking exactly the same. It's scary sometimes. You're in an elevator and you think ‘Oh, I'm surrounded by clones!’ It’s almost futuristic. Maybe this is because I'm getting older, and I had a feeling that we might have dressed similarly to one another in the past, but we did not wear the exact same variations of something. So hopefully, this is the lowest point of a lack of identity, and from this point, we all go on to be more individual, as in expressing our own emotions and thoughts.

MK: A different dystopia than the one you described earlier, where creatures are running around underground. These clones are the ones coming face to face with your cyborgs.

BH: I hope technology is also becoming less separated from the body and maybe getting more and more integrated, without being scary.

MK: Now these two different shows just came to mind; Alexander McQueen S/S 1999 and Coperni S/S 2023.

BH: Yes. That's brilliant. So clever and a huge inspiration as well. This is also how I saw the ‘Digital Artifacts’ project, the wax performance. Could this be the way we dress in the future? Every day some liquid or element gets thrown over at us and it solidifies into shape. You don't have to think about what you will wear. And these materials could be melted and reused every day. That would be fantastic.

MK: Very futuristic! On a less positive note, I imagined a body covered in plastic, and it made me think of the presence of plastics everywhere. Of course, they exist in landscapes and soils, but I mean more specifically inside the body. There are alarming amounts of microplastics in the human body now, living in our organs and tissues. Do you think art can give us a different perception that we don't necessarily see under a microscope?

BH: Yeah, it's a lot, right? In a way, I show a great deal on the outside of the body, and then people are scared of it. But if you wrote a note, ‘this is actually what is happening on the inside of your body’, people would freak out! This parasite is the plastic in your body, that's a nice idea for a new project!

MK: I am curious to know what your personal relationship to clothing is. There is this podcast I’ve been enjoying lately, called ‘Fashion Neurosis’ by Bella Freud. She talks about fashion through the methods of psychoanalysis and refreshing conversations with style icons, designers, artists, and so on. It’s interesting to see how they all think about fashion differently, as rebellion, as armor, as protection, as vulnerability. How has your work changed your perception of what you wear every day in and out of the studio?

BH: That's very interesting. On a personal level, it’s been very different throughout my career. I think I haven't bought anything new for the past ten years. And I could almost see my projects build up on my clothes, like this paint splatter stain from this project, and that's a silicon spill from that project. Right now, I'm very much more interested in finding new, different materials to wear, how they feel, and how they let me express something. I also like thrifting, which is a new hobby of mine. I think it started by working on a lot of operas and ballet, where, at least in the Netherlands, one of the criteria is to be as sustainable as possible. One way of doing this is by only using thrifted fabrics. So, my work brought me to all this.

MK: I am curious to know what your personal relationship to clothing is. There is this podcast I’ve been enjoying lately, called ‘Fashion Neurosis’ by Bella Freud. She talks about fashion through the methods of psychoanalysis and refreshing conversations with style icons, designers, artists, and so on. It’s interesting to see how they all think about fashion differently, as rebellion, as armor, as protection, as vulnerability. How has your work changed your perception of what you wear every day in and out of the studio?

BH: That's very interesting. On a personal level, it’s been very different throughout my career. I think I haven't bought anything new for the past ten years. And I could almost see my projects build up on my clothes, like this paint splatter stain from this project, and that's a silicon spill from that project. Right now, I'm very much more interested in finding new, different materials to wear, how they feel, and how they let me express something. I also like thrifting, which is a new hobby of mine. I think it started by working on a lot of operas and ballet, where, at least in the Netherlands, one of the criteria is to be as sustainable as possible. One way of doing this is by only using thrifted fabrics. So, my work brought me to all this.

BH: There's a whole system in the Netherlands where you put used textiles in the containers on the street. Then all that comes to a big warehouse where it gets sorted. I have recently been starting my projects by going into this warehouse. It's a huge inspiration, but it also changed my fashion a bit because I might pull something out and I think, ‘Okay, I'm going to wear this from now on.’ So, I dress quite far for my own work.

MK: I have to ask, is there anything new you're working on now that you'd like to share?

BH: I am working on a project that I started some years ago, a wrestling sport that I re-designed. Two male bodies get completely covered with candy. The wrestler has to eat the candy off the other’s body and the one who has none left, loses the game. For me, you don't want to see it as much as you want to see it. It's almost erotic. The guys are very macho, so the combination with playful candies is fantastic. And the film will play a little bit with that concept and, hopefully, it will convey the same point. I found an amazing choreographer who makes the most awkward duets in the world that he can find.

BH: You feel very uncomfortable watching. He is also inspired by the famous wrestling contest in America, WWE. How wrestlers make a grip so that the other one can’t move anymore, or when they tap because it's too much. It's horrible to look at because you really feel everything. I want to work with this and then add the element of candy. Typically, candy becomes a reward. If you have a child and they fall, you give them candy to cheer them up! So, I was thinking of this really interesting contrast: it combines pain and pleasure. Now, we are designing the candy, the outfits, and the rules of the game. I think we will finish this around summer.

BH: Yeah, me too!

MK: Nice. I can't wait to see it!