PROJECTS
CONCEPT / CREATION / RESEARCH
A selection of my work; Story maps, performance art, narrated long-distance hikes, toolkits, videos, situated interventions and more.
(Un)disciplined and uncommitted to specific media, my main priority is to unveil the initially concealed. I do this by carefully considered sensory provocations, shapeshifting, and aesthetic ruptures that allow us to identify the glitches and slippages between static western categorical certainties and the open-ended, unresolved cyclical patterns that otherwise rule our everyday lived experiences. My work seeks to unsettle assumptions of who 'we' are, and how 'we' relate to ourselves, others and the world, without falling into binary-thinking. My topics of interest include gender, wildlife conservation, media, discursive power, the urban-, queerness.
GALLERY
Showcase
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KNOWLEDGE-LAND-SCAPE
IMMERSIVE PLATFORM
Welcome to the knowledge-land-scape.
This space extends the work of Saskia de Wildt’s PhD dissertation, “Encountering the Great White Beast: Polar Bear Research as Ethical Space, Practice, and Process of Engagement.”
What does it mean, materially and practically, to ethically reconciliate Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (the Inuit Knowledge system) and western sciences, within community-based polar bear research?
In this Knowledge-Land-Scape you can choose among three narrated pathways to engage with that question. However, like all community-based research, these journeys will not be straightforward. You may run into ice-pressure ridges, shipwrecks and shapeshifting beasts, as well as -depending on how you respond- plenty of landmarks and vistas, that help you orient and gain emergent insights, as you make your own way.
VOICES OF THUNDER
PHD RESEARCH CREATION
Polar bear management policies in the last two decades, including a polar bear hunting moratorium, have disproportionately impacted Gjoa Haven compared to other Nunavut communities. Gjoa Haven hunters seek recognition of the impacts of these quotas on income, culture, and inter-generational knowledge transfer. They also seek better integration of their knowledge in polar bear monitoring and management. Engaging with Gjoa Haven’s appeal for wider recognition of these impacts, the community and I have co-produced several knowledge products, targeting multiple audiences, within the BearWatch monitoring project.
‘We seek acknowledgement and apologies for suffering the consequences of the quota regulations; a loss of culture and knowledge, as well as increased danger due to rising number of polar bears around their communities. Inuit knowledge in terms of accuracy and inherent value needs to be recognized and better acknowledged. We want better integration of Inuit knowledge in survey research, like for example accounting for seasonal changes. Scientific monitoring surveys have limitations, we ask that researchers will recognize and take Inuit observations more seriously.
VOICES OF THUNDER: ANIMATED GRAPHIC DOCUMENTARY
Testimonies from hunters and elders about polar bear quota reduction impacts in Gjoa Haven.
Art by Danny Aaluk
VOICES OF THUNDER: TIMELINE
WINDS OF CHANGE
Gjoa Haven is seeking recognition; ‘We want these ‘‘voices of thunder to echo everywhere’’.
These stories should finally come out. There are two generations lost and ‘’millions of dollars’’ in sportshunting. We want everyone to hear us. ‘’We’re tired of waiting’’.
VOICES OF THUNDER; A TESTIMONIAL READING
This academic paper invites fellow scholars and colleagues to join in a testimonial reading of the quota reduction impacts as testified to by Gjoa Haven’s community members.
Under review
MX. SCIENCE
Situated performance(s)
As a PhD candidate that explores ways to engage differentiated knowledges within Canadian Arctic research, and polar bear monitoring research specifically, I am interested in practices that move beyond 'integration/inclusion' approaches. As such I theorize PRACTICE according to the framework of "ethical space" (Ermine, 2007). For such practice to take place we need a "third" space - outside of each knowledge system.
To create such a space, where multiple knowledge systems can meaningfully negotiate their mutual terms of engagement, western systems need to "roll back/decolonize/question their positionality" first. My persona (beyond bringing playfulness and hopefully a smile to your face) invites especially non-indigenous researchers to rethink and reflect on their role and position in our scientific landscape. As a figure that potentially unsettles several norms within the Arctic sciences, Mx. Science holds potential to invoke conversations, and create a liminal space to build new relationships. As a situated performance it is both an exercise in new ways of engaging each other through genuine curiosity, as well as an effective tool to que(e)ry where and when differentiated bodies dis/connect in space.
DRAGKING ACADEMY AMSTERDAM
As a founding member of the House of Lostbois collective, me and my 'kin' create space to diversify queer spaces and -stages.
Within a model of a queer family structure, we provide peer mentorship, and support. More than a vehicle for individual performance careers, the House of Lostbois is part of a recent global revival of drag’-kings’, ‘-quings’ and ‘-things’. This generation of (club-)performers shapes an avant-garde community that addresses contemporary political issues, while undoing traditional, categorical understandings of gender, sex and family- by queer kinship structures.
In 2023, the House of Løst Bois was knighted the
Knight of the Night by Amsterdam’s Night Mayor and
winners of Superball 2023.
VINNY VON VINCI
As a founding member of the House of Lostbois collective, I celebrate and politicize (my) queer body and genders, to explore the potential of the stage for queer ways of knowing and being.
I perform as Vinny von Vinci, a boylesque/drag artist:
''Vinny von Vinci is founding member of the Amsterdam House of Løstbois. Never lost, never found, he drifts between continents; alternatingly performing in the Netherlands and in Canada. As a performer Vinny invites you to join him into the uncanny valley where the more-than-human intersect with campy king queerlesque. This king seeks to extend time and space on stage, and celebrate the queer gaze in the club. As a researcher Vinny introduces drag as a tool of inquiry for transcultural encounters. Varying from the sexy, the unsettling and the humorous, you’ll never quite know what to expect from this drag performer.''
The galleries below link to highlighted performances/events & my instagram account, recording this ongoing manifestation of gender performativity and queer kinship
DWARS DOOR HET OOSTEN
Long-term multimedia storymapping / journalism project on the opportunities and innovation that takes place in rural areas of the Netherlands.
For this ongoing project, I cross the country by foot, arranging interviews and encounters on the go. I share dinners with strangers and stay at their homes, while we exchange stories and experiences of our country, before continuing my walk the next day.
Due to the highly localized and specific cultural nuances of this project, the storymaps are in Dutch. It's visual set-up, however, still makes it worth-while exploring, regardless of the languages you speak.
EXPLORING JOURNALISM'S LIMITS
In 2018-2019, I worked as an embedded researcher for 'Exploring Journalism's limits' - A practice-based research collaboration between the RUG (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen), HU (Hogeschool Utrecht) and Verspers.
during this period I co-authord two articles and developed an online toolkit for freshly graduated journalists.
TOWARDS AN EXPERIENTIALIST UNDERSTANDING OF
JOURNALISM: EXPLORING ARTS-BASED RESEARCH FOR
JOURNALISM STUDIES
Published may 2020 in Journalism Studies
In this paper, we explore the ways in which we can employ arts-based
research methods to unpack and represent the diversity and
complexity of journalistic experiences and (self) conceptualisations.
We address the need to reconsider the ways in which we theorise
and research the field of journalism. We thereby aim to
complement the current methodologies, theories, and prisms
through which we consider our object of study to depict more
comprehensively the diversity of practices in the field. To gather
stories about journalism creatively (and ultimately more inclusively
and richly), we propose and present the use of arts-based research
methods in journalism studies. By employing visual and narrative
artistic forms as a research tool, we make room for the senses,
emotion and imagination on the part of the respondents,
researchers and audiences of the output. We draw on a specific
collaboration with artists and journalists that resulted in a research
event in which 32 journalists were invited to collaboratively
recreate the “richness and complexity” of journalistic practices.
AFRISPECTIVES
Storymapping & Educational toolkit
Afrispectives is platform by and for people of African and Afro-Caribbean descent focused on connecting, embracing and celebrating a shared heritage, with the aim of redefining history, present and future from a Pan-African and decolonial perspective.
The platform continues to exist under community leadership, but originally emerged from a project that was financed through the Dutch ministry of Social Affairs in the context of the Dutch implementation of the UN decade of people of African Descent. This project contained the creation of a digital storymap, community event and free educational toolkit developed by me, IDleaks, Mano a Mano Producoes and Aspha Bijnaar.
THE MICROBAR
The microbar is an intervention / foodtruck. We toured Dutch food- and Music festivals from 2014-2016 to spread awareness around the carbon footprint of eating meat. We took a culinary approach towards the UN recommendation of adding insect to our Western diets and served delicious snacks made with grasshoppers and mealworms
ARTSTIKKE ART-DEPT.
I Co-Founded and Managed Artstikke Art Department for over a decade.
We were responsible for the Art-direction of projects by Microsoft, Amnesty International, Oxfam, Adidas and many more.
Artstikke is an Amsterdam based company, specialized in communicating a specific story through the Art-direction of multi-media productions, including commercials and feature films as well as events and campaigns. Apart from more hands-on skills like creative design, conceptualising, set-design, special prop making and carpentry, my experience while running Artstikke included team leadership, budgeting and project management.
