I am a thousand kilometers wide is a multi-medial narrative following the findings and the collages of a researcher far away looking for the aura’s contained within the resonant sounds in the desolate arctic landscape.

The audiovisual work contains a sequence of stills accompanied by continuous sound that reverberate through the space and depict a journey of spatial sound. Creating a new truthful documentation of what living within the researcher’s mind is like.

The space is littered with mental notes and domestic sound, the debris of sound binds the space together.

Artist statement

Siem de Boer(born: 1995 Zaandam) is a post-digital artist based in Utrecht,
Working with sound, video, architecture and sculptural materials alike. Siem’s
basis is simple: an emancipatory experience of surroundings and the landscape,
that work with subjects like extractivism, Industrial topics, architectural
and interpersonal/local stories.

Currently working on the subject of sound materiality, aiming discovering
movements and performative actions that can be held within a space to alter
its destination and narrative. Researching the effects of the human senses as
a new manifestation of praxis.

Mainly working with digital means, Siem tries to bridge certain digital
properties back into the physical. In materials like stone, metal, wood and
print a new sensibility is reached, intervening with the original space and
the imaginary through installation and performance. When working with this
invisible narative, Siem likes to create environments that deconstruct the
space towards a new reality.

A new dwelling for the emancipated dweller.

Ambitions

Working on the wider side of architecture and living spaces as a tactile fingerprint of personal stories, I would like to do a series of works on this subject. Concerning the undiscovered layers of locations and their (former) inhabitants I'd hope to make a bigger series of performances and installations that will form a platform or village that connects histories of real places with that of fantastical ones.

In five years, I hope I have written a great deal of research on the subject in a more academic area. I hope to work on the discovery of a new kind of worldbuilding that defies the current status-quo and individualistic architecture, in this branch I hope by then to have finished an MA course and maybe consider a University degree. The possibility to let multiple people participate in performances would be a great asset to this movement, initially I hope to start a fictional artwork series that decompiles the world around us in a set of affirmations, talks, music pieces and installation experiences.

I'd also hope to broaden my ambition of working within dutch/international art institutes and movements to collaborate on the broader world of this subject and participate in the reshaping of the artworld as a segregated entity.

Learned during the studies

The most important things I've learned in the BA Fine Art studies was the ability to look at a project, subject and material in a very autonomous way. For me it created the opportunity to not be subjected to the material limitations, but to really let any material do what I want it to do. The broad facilities in HKU gave me the possibility to print and generate many different art pieces that could be combined and enhance my critical discourse.

The bachelor for me enhanced my senses to the extend that I knew what the composition would be my designated research topic, to accept my graphic design and musical backgrounds and combine them within my Installations. It also helped me so much to contextualize as an artist knowing I could make discourse based decisions to question very real social and architectural problems.

List of publications / exhibitions / prices / concerts / shows etc.

Shows

- PEEK @HKU, Utrecht, 2022 (NL)
It is the mantis show

- House peace @Hotel Mokum, Amsterdam, 2021
(NL)
Tidbit humid lukewarmish

- Arena group show @AG, Utrecht, 2021 (NL)
Doglike, Like dog

- Misty Realms @Gallery nowhere, 2021 (Online)
(collaboration with Michiel Teeuw)

- IMPAKT Festival “Turning Torrents” @AG,
Utrecht, 2020 (NL)
The fifth season
(collaboration with Lobke Roenhorst)

- BYOB Festival @Nicolaïkerk,
Utrecht, 2019 (NL)
(Group project)

- 1980712 @Hooghiemstra,
Utrecht, 2018

Publications

- “The last sound yet” Thesis/reader, 2022

- “reading Edda,hearing I ask: Untangling the
Voluspa 1#”, 2021 (Group zine)

- “Onima” Graphic Novel, 2018

Studies/scholarships

- Hogeschool voor de kunsten Utrecht
BA Fine Arts, 2022

- ROC Friesepoort
MBO Media design, 2017

- SMART Exchange 2015
Bonn/King's Lynn/Drachten

The last sound yet

The last sound yet is a speculative dive into the world of omni-sensualism. Within ocular-centrist society the other senses are somewhat overlooked and subjugated, this leaves marks across our perceivable world but also within culture and arts. Through the lens of music and sound The last sound yet tries to find a connection point between the importance of sound in our world today, and the possibility of sound as a emancipated sense in the art of tomorrow. Written through narrative, poems and literary research by Siem de boer.