Cultuurhaven x Matters of Being

Matters of Being at West Den Haag

Listening to the vibrations deep within the earth, Justin Bennett’s Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains (2018) questions our relationships with technology and with one another. Turning our attention to the subtle fragments of the space around us, both mirror and camera lens in Sam Scheuermann’s performance Mirror set-up (2025) search for the details they wish to capture. In Zeno van den Broek’s film From Voice to Pulse (2022), a human voice and robotic percussion perform an algorithmic composition together.

Matters of Being explores what film can be. A soundscape with a light composition can be just as cinematic in its storytelling as a movie. During the events cinematic techniques are examined in various forms, such as performance, installation, as well as artist films and documentaries. The events conclude with a moderated conversation between the artists showing their works and the audience.

Justin Bennett (1964, UK) lives and works in The Hague, NL. Justin Bennett’s work combines sound, image, space and storytelling. He uses video, spatial sound and audio-walks for presentations in public spaces, concert venues and art spaces. Current work focuses on ecology, geology, forms of habitation and land-use. He is a member of the performance group BMB con.

Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains. (2018) The Kola Super-Deep Borehole, a Soviet cold-war project, is the deepest man-made hole on earth. Viktor Koslovsky, a geologist guides us around the ruined site, his small laboratory and the borehole itself. He explains his work, listening to vibrations deep within the earth, linking geology with Sami shamanism and divination.

Sam Scheuermann's artistic practice probes the mechanisms of looking, framing, and the politics of spectatorship, encompassing performance, installation, video, and photography. Working with the gaze as a starting point, she aims to shift our attention from what we see to how we see.

Mirror set-up (2025) A construction of mirrors explores our surroundings, its shifting reflections are captured on camera. As mirror and lens search and refract, our perception fragments and distorts. Mirror set-up explores the construction of our perception by observing observation itself, unfolding as a live montage of gaze and attention.

Zeno van den Broek is a composer and artist exploring the relationship between humans and technology. His audiovisual works investigate how interactions with constructed environments shape experience. By challenging perceptions of technological spaces, he encourages deeper engagement, disrupting passive consumption and inviting audiences to explore unfamiliar possibilities together and reflect.

From Voice to Pulse (Netherlands, 2022, 10’44”) is an audiovisual work with an algorithmic composition for custom robotic percussions and the human voice. Visually it takes from the weaving loom and self playing musical instruments as the Componium. The text for the voice, performed by Gagi Petrovic, was created with GPT-2 open-source artificial intelligence.

Nele Brökelmann (Matters of Being curator) is an artist deeply intrigued by the human need for structures of meaning. The perpetual search for and fabrication of meaning are recurring themes in her practice. These human made structures, and mental and worldly concepts create (physical) borders and either/or thinking which Brökelmann continuously seeks to challenge by playing with the experiences and concepts of distance, repetition and parallelity. Apart from her artistic practice and curating Matters of Being, Brökelmann writes for the contemporary art magazine Metropolis M.

This event is presented by iii with financial support from Creative Industries Fund NL and The Municipality of The Hague.

Trigger warnings: flashing light and strobe effects
Live-recording, audience might be captured on camera

Banner image: filmstill of Justin Bennett's Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains (2018)

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Host or Publisher West Den Haag