Borborygmus
2017
Video, 00:20:35.
Materials: Video
Collection: Courtesy of the artist and Galrie Fons Welters, Amsterdam.
The video Borborygmus starts as the recording of a classic artist talk, in which Hedwig Houben puts recent work into relation with her broader practice. She discusses the role of the undefined ‘it’ in her performance, starting from other characters in her oeuvre and their experiences and feelings. In the course of the performance, Houben mixes different registers, from art canon and scientific discourse to personal anecdotes and Wikipedia wisdom – with a poker face and always in the same measured tone of voice – while manipulating plasticine objects.
Houben interrupts her lecture at various times to simulate digestive sounds. Borborygmus, the title of the work, is an onomatopoeia. It's also the scientific term for the rumbling, bubbling sound caused by intestinal gas. Houben uses digestion as a metaphor for the creative process, which she approaches as something physical, corporeal.
“…The intestines play a major role in causing a ‘gut feeling’, meaning the small and big intestine. In fact these two represent a whole other world inside the body that for us, from the outside, is full of secrets…”
- Borborygmus, 2017
