INTERVENING SPACE is about doing interventions with myself as a tool, as a performer in order to question a certain convention.

While researching our current conventions within the “boring” office space, starting with myself, I focused on an individual action that is collectively applicable: the act of sitting. The first thing we do after arriving at the office is take a seat behind our desks. We even relax nowadays by sitting down and playing with our digital devices. After research I discovered that when we sit 8-11 hours a day, we have a till 40% increased chance on a premature death. Short video during research: conventions office culture.

Thus, I experienced what it really feels like to sit for eight hours in a row on the same chair. Insight: sitting is the new smoking. Sitting is killing us, and maybe smoking isn’t even that much worse than sitting, because the act that goes along with smoking, requires us to move our bodies.

Exhibition work, click here to see the performance video.

P.S. I am very happy to announce that I am a selected member of the 26 successful projects with ‘INTERVENING SPACE: Reframing conventions’ for the IFFTI Polimoda Conference in Florence, 2015. Take a look at the compilation here.

Some fragments from the sitting video. 

During the process I intervened within empty office spaces and invited photographer Marieke Gras to capture the process.

Additional videos throughout the process:

Founder of ‘Studio Zeitgeist’ and Trendwatcher Farid Tabarki mentioned me and part of my graduation project in his column in the Dutch newspaper ‘Het Financieele Dagblad.’

The link to the article.

© Lisette Ros
© Photos Marieke Gras
© Text Financieel Dagblad Farid Tabarki