Mark IJzerman

One of the interests of interdisciplinary projects is precisely to put different facets of the same subject into perspective. They allow for a meeting between different people with different visions, who at first glance would have no reason to be in the same place. This is one of the aspects that Mark IJzerman wanted to explore through pier pressure and which, according to him, gives this type of artistic project its unique character. After starting out in music and sound, he has gradually strengthened the useful, even political character of his projects by integrating human and ecological values.

Mark's family comes from the coastal province of Zeeland in the Netherlands, a region marked by the large-scale construction of dams, locks and dikes in the second half of the 20th century. As a child he is impressed by the stories told to him by his great-grandmother, who herself still wore the traditional clothes of the region. He grows up in Eindhoven, where he connects with music. At the time, his parents urge him to choose an instrument, and he settles on the electronic keyboard, only to realise that the keyboard is not very popular with music bands. In his teenage years, he still plays in a few bands, but more importantly, he starts to compose music on his computer.

His first frustrations appear in high school when his music teacher expresses his disdain for electronic music. He makes it the subject of his higher education at the Utrecht School of the Arts, which offers a double major in music and technology, a little too much focused on the latter for his taste. He finds himself in a better position, but feels bored with the established rules of Western music and wants to learn more in a more open way. In the early 2010s, Mark graduates and starts his professional career. He takes a series of small jobs doing sound for commercials, and turns down his first big contract; he feels that the work on offer does not match his values, a difficult decision for any young arts graduate, but one that sets the tone for the artist's future choices.

During his internship at Sound and Music in London, he gets to work on a project called “minute of listening”. It's about developing an educational method for primary school children which consists of having them listen to a sound for one minute, and letting them imagine what it could be. Then they are given the right answer, and they listen again. The experience can stop there, or continue with a discussion on culture, geography, etc. This offers a different perspective on music education, an essential element that appeals to Mark. Back in the Netherlands, he tries to spread the method in schools, but the work of dissemination proves to be tiring. Nevertheless, he manages to get it into a few organisations and then becomes a teacher at the school where he studied.

At the same time, he joins a sound art collective called Soundlings. It brings together young sound artists and musicians, freshly graduated, all facing the same dilemma: how to live as an artist? Together, they set up various projects and organise a weekly think tank on themes that were not addressed during their studies. The discussions are partly philosophical, such as sound in everyday life, partly oriented towards other fields, such as video games or design, but also pragmatic, such as the financing of artistic projects. Thanks to Soundlings, Mark is gaining confidence to assert himself as an artist.

He keeps on collaborating with other organisations and artists, designing the sound for works. In particular, he does R&D for a start-up that creates "crdl", a device that facilitates communication with people suffering from dementia, through touch and sound. As well as being a technological medical device, it is a useful and poetic object. As Mark is mainly drawn to the development element, his interventions are short-lived.Then in 2016, things change; he produces the audiovisual performance Presque Vu at the request of the FIBER Festival organisers who give him little direction. This last collaboration marks the beginning of Mark's artistic career.

He then meets Sébastien Robert who helps him with Time Shift, an important encounter as it is the beginning of a personal and professional friendship. But despite his achievements, Mark is still searching for what he wants to express with his work, and it is precisely thanks to a residency in Chile with Sébastien in 2019 that he finds some answers. His trip inspires him to focus his research on ecology, and to talk about it through the technology that Mark masters. More than that, the artist discovers a love of the field; he enjoys working with experts and open data, but understands that you have to be in the field to feel and connect all this data. And because art should be able to raise difficult questions, their performance As Above, So Below explores how to address the friction between ecology and technology. Thus, this project becomes a major turning point for his artistic approach, and the resolution of this friction a driving force for his practice.

In 2020, Mark begins teaching in the Ecology Futures master's program at the Master Institute of Visual Cultures; in line with his approach, he takes students to old mines or closed sites to examine the different strata, whether geological or social, and artworks are created from them. The artist feels fulfilled, he learns a lot from his students, while continuing his work of research and experimentation with technologies. With Humans, Talk To Me, AI makes its appearance; this installation invites the audience to lie down in fishing nets and talk to the North Sea itself (in a speculative way). After researching texts about the North Sea, most of which are actually technical, the creators trained an AI to focus on poetic literature and converse in order to "create a voice" of the sea. Similarly, Mark uses AI to develop conversations between humans and other species and create proximity, such as with barnacles in Conversation with crustaceans.

As time goes by, the sea becomes more and more important in Mark's projects, a crucial element in the history of the Netherlands and a concern for the future. The work on crustaceans also allows him to reconnect with his childhood; the curators of the Flood Museum, located in the province of Zeeland, seduced by his work, solicit him to make certain objects from their collection speak, a rather technical project that is currently underway. pier Pressure is certainly a first for Mark as the technical aspect is less pronounced and sound less central. Also, the kind of research that went into the work was an element that he missed, and the grants that an organisation like S+T+ARTS offers, is a boon to artists who want to pursue a subject further.

Among the next steps, the project is to be presented at the Maritime Museum in Rotterdam, the artist continues to transmit the values of engagement through teaching, and to organise meetings and research laboratories with other artists. Mark and Sébastien will also meet again for a residency in June 2023, this time in Svalbard in the Arctic. They are interested in underwater mining and its impact on indigenous cultures. Finally, in terms of future aspirations, Mark would like to continue his research on the non-perceptible to the naked eye, and make this friction with our needs visible to the public.

For Mark IJzerman, it is clear that art is much more than a means of expression, it is a vehicle for change, and the artistic act is above all a political act.

His works invite us to step back, take a different look at our surroundings and question our choices. In a way, they already embody change.