Project

BLOB was born from the desire of Ulrike Scholtes and Marielle Kleyn Winkel to explore new avenues of artistic research. The name is inspired by the blobfish, a deep-sea creature that only takes form under the immense pressure of the ocean depths, defying aesthetic expectations above water. This metaphor lies at the heart of BLOB’s practice, where the environmental and situational pressures shape the work in unexpected and generative ways.

At BLOB, we embrace what might seem like limiting conditions as fertile ground for creativity. Our work challenges conventional beauty norms, much like the “ugly” blobfish, and celebrates the unpredictable and the absurd. From fluxus-like performances to immersive gatherings, installations, exercises, and small publications, BLOB is a playful yet restorative art practice with a humorous edge.

Rooted in care and an openness to unconventional forms, BLOB is a continuously evolving process that brings people together to rethink and reshape the boundaries of artistic expression.

What it means to create

Artistic careers are often rather messy and nonlinear. To maintain an artistic practice, one often performs paid or unpaid labor that creates the conditions for regular artistic work. Caregiving responsibilities, such as motherhood, can interrupt a disciplined work routine and challenge conditions vital to artistic practices, like flow, receptivity, or intuition. These forms of embodied labor are not only over-romanticized (see Scholtes, 2024) but may conflict with other forms of labor integral to an art worker’s daily life.

The professional art world frequently foregrounds either the work of young artists or those with consistent careers. We, two professionals rebuilding our artistic practice after focusing on motherhood, teaching, and massage therapy, wonder: Could we function together as one “proper” artist? What would this mean for our individual and collective practice? What challenges come with radical collaboration and relinquishing individual authorship? We also question what our work outside of art offers. What sensitivities, ways of knowing, and embodied skills cultivated through caregiving can benefit our artistic work? How can we merge two practices into one and allow non-artistic aspects of life to substantively influence our practice?

In our daily motherhood, the pressures and demands echo those of the artistic process—both are spaces of vulnerability, uncertainty, and relentless dedication. Our creative practice has unfolded within the confines of home, shaped by children’s rhythms. This shift challenges norms of artistic production and invites exploration into what it means to create.

Blob as a concept

Blobbing challenges the view of the human body as a closed whole. It posits the body as permeable and interconnected with its environment, highlighting fluidity between one body and other lifeforms. Inspired by Daisy Hildyard’s The Second Body (2017) and Annemarie Mol’s The Body Multiple (2002), we propose a multiplicity of bodies—never whole and always leaky (Shildrick, 2005).

How can the idea of blobbing illuminate the intricate interconnections between human existence and the natural world? This concept seeks to dissolve perceived separations between human and environment, emphasizing our integral role within natural cycles and systems.

Blob as a method

“Blobbing” emerges as an artistic research method embodying the principles of leaky bodies. It involves opening up the senses, dissolving barriers between bodies, and engaging in exploration that transcends conventional understanding. This method encourages vulnerability, permeability, and a culture of “leaking”—sharing the process at every research stage. It questions individual authorship and foregrounds the specificities of the researcher’s situatedness, aiming for maximal fluidity.

BLOB embraces a process-oriented and site-specific approach to art-making, where environmental and societal conditions shape our work.

Our practice integrates fluxus writing, soft props, and everyday objects, blending performance art, installations, and public interventions. We draw attention to the unnoticed geo-choreographies of daily life— or interacting with public spaces. By mapping and documenting these micro-movements, we create participatory works that invite the audience to rethink their relationship with their surroundings.

In our participatory installations and movement-based workshops, we employ improvised performance and relational aesthetics to engage communities. For example, we facilitate intimate tea ceremonies, where residents share their stories and movements, or create collective soft props that participants can use to explore and soften the boundaries between bodies and space.

Our work also involves mini-scripts, inspired by fluxus performance, which visitors can enact, creating playful but reflective interactions with their environment. These interventions are always in dialogue with the specific location and the people who inhabit it, making each project unique and responsive.

Through shared storytelling, collective letter writing, and public readings, we emphasize the relational and permeable nature of human experiences. BLOB challenges conventional ideas of individual authorship, instead prioritizing collaborative processes where boundaries between creator, audience, and the environment are blurred.

We aim to create art that not only reflects on but actively participates in the rhythms and dynamics of everyday life, fostering a deeper connection between people and the spaces they inhabit.

Blob as somatic practice

As makers and researchers, we practice blobbing to cultivate fluidity, interconnectedness, and leakiness. We move, visualize, walk, and experiment with techniques from somatic movement, mime, Butoh, massage therapy, and haptonomy. We foreground multiplicity, searching for various body imaginations that foster specific ways of moving and relating to realities.

Incorporating blobbing into somatic practices enhances bodily awareness and responsiveness to internal and external stimuli, fostering a deeper kinesthetic understanding of perpetual interaction with the environment.

Blob as a persona

We are two art practitioners who have collaborated in the past (see Out of Your Mindfulness) at the intersection of somatic and artistic practice. Over the past five years, we each developed individually—a successful massage studio (Movement Matters) and a PhD intersecting social science and artistic research (Ulrike Scholtes). Both becoming parents, we navigate the challenges of multiple roles.

We question art world conventions that foreground youth and coherent CVs. By merging our two CVs into one, we experiment with a leaky artistic practice that merges bodies and blurs boundaries. Without assuming what parenthood or being an artist means, we practice with curiosity and rigor, articulating the sensitivities our situatedness develops and exploring how these can be practiced as generous and generating artistic skills.

Viewing blobbing as a persona invites dialogue about identity in a fluid and interconnected world. What does it mean to inhabit multiple bodies and share intertwined yet distinct realities? How do the gaps and voids we often overlook define us more accurately than the visible?

Invitation to expand definitions of artistic spaces, processes and values.

This project is an invitation to critically examine and expand definitions of artistic spaces, processes, and values. By embracing ambiguity and fluidity, we aim to create works that resonate with the complexities of human identity—fluid, overlapping, and permeable. We challenge residency programs and the broader art world to reconsider frameworks to be more inclusive of diverse life experiences, such as parenthood, which profoundly shape artistic perspectives and outputs.

Drawings by Ulrike Scholtes

References:

• Hildyard, Daisy. The Second Body. Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017.
• Mol, Annemarie. The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Duke University Press, 2002.
• Shildrick, Margrit. Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)ethics. Routledge, 2005.
• Parker, Priya. The Art of Gathering. Riverhead Books, 2018.
• Kentgens, Simon & Cramer, Florian. Hosting as Artistic Practice. Humdrum Press, 2023.
• Scholtes, Ulrike. Working Words: Words as tools to visualize embodied labour. Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, 2024.
• Scholtes, Ulrike. Finding Words for Feeling Bodies: Exploring Drawing Techniques in Dutch Care Practices. Medical Anthropology, 2023