HEDEN: Aarde x Paradys

Since 2014 we’ve been organizing HEDEN: one-evening-expo-and-talkshow with three artists and a lecturer of the world of science or philosophy around a contemporary subject.
HEDEN is perfectly accessible for a broad audience without (fore)knowledge of contemporary art. Host Rutger Middendorp takes the audience along into conversations with the artists and lecturer. HEDEN encourages critical thinking and connects visual art with science and philosophy: to critically keep assessing the world through the angle of art, with the audience as an active conversation partner.

In the upcoming edition of HEDEN we will look to the relation between mankind, the Earth, and all of our co-inhabitants on this Earth. Co-inhabitants like animals and plants, but also rocks, water, and actually anything that isn’t human. As humans we look towards the world around us from our own perspective. We see ourselves as beings with consciousness and think this separates us from all other beings on Earth. We are the ‘subject’ and what we’re looking at is the ‘object’. This established humanity as a highest point in a hierarchy. Scientists, writers and artists are researching the consciousness of mankind and if this order of things is correct. What happens when we break with this theory? If we for once start to acknowledge the perspectives of our fellow inhabitants of this planet? Or even to take on these viewpoints to tackle certain problems?

This manner of thinking could shed a whole other light on issues like the climate crisis. This is a problem that concerns all of the Earth and her inhabitants, so it isn’t exactly fair to only consider it from our viewpoint, right? What happens if we’d think in a species-transcending manner and tried to see the big picture? What insights would it give us if we would let go of the traditional hierarchy and made the perspectives of other species equal to ours?

During this edition of HEDEN titled ‘HEDEN: Aarde (Earth)’ we are going to try to find answers to these questions. Writer and philosopher Eva Meijer will give a talk about the theme to kick off the evening. After that we will look at how artists Lucie Draai, Diana Scherer (Paradys) and Bart Eysink Smeets come with suggestions to consider, for example, a stone, a micro-organism or a root structure as something that feels, thinks, acts or even creates. To treat them as ‘subjects’. What if we try to understand what they want?

Do you have thoughts about this and would you like to come and join the conversation? Or do you just want to see what kind of interested ideas will come up during the evening? Then you simply can’t miss this edition of HEDEN: Aarde on Thursday the 2nd of June!