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INTRODUCTION
As an artist, De Nijs shows how culture acts
upon our senses, and he expresses this in a great variety
of ways, making use of continually-changing technology. This
allows him to emphasise a new role for the artist that seems
to have been established by our developing culture of technology.
De Nijs describes himself and his work as recognition of the
dynamic collision of bodies, machines and other media.
The interface between the body and technology
forms an important basis for De Nijs's work. Technology must
literally merge, become absorbed into the body so that it
becomes a co-determiner of perception. And here perception
not only refers to how external stimuli are interpreted by
the five senses, but also the feelings that come from within
the body itself, the information that is derived from one's
own muscles and nerves (the technical term being proprioception).
Because De Nijs's work often involves the entire body of the
observer, they therefore become less of an observer and more
of a participator; someone who experiences the work. The techniques
employed in the construction of his work mediate this experience.
One of the characteristics of a technological
culture is that change is constant. Everyone who wants to
keep pace is continually required to adjust; which does not
happen automatically and can, in time lead to cultural-pathological
anomalies. In this way, travellers had to get used to the
first trains and aeroplanes. The introduction of such travel
technology initially led to disorientation and required a
new outlook. It is pre-eminently these cultural processes
that are given artistic form by Marnix de Nijs.
Marnix has presented his works at several
national and international media-festivals and worked with
Time's Up_org, Edwin van der Heide, Montevideo_lab, V2_lab,
ZKM and the Krisztina de Châtel Dance Company.
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