Women Cinemakers meets
Iris Donker Lives and works in Eindhoven City
With wonder Iris Donker ('s Hertogenbosch, 1986), observes the collective agreement upon which our reality is based. The underlying dysfunctional layer, which is being perpetuated against all reasoning, gives her reason to seek seclusion and to re-shape, distort, digitalize and once again realize the world. Donker uses sunlight to illuminate the dark side of life and through her work she creates space for a fantastical reality full of contradictions. “Actually in my work I’m always seeking for what would be for me the ideal reality. An intuitive protest against daily life and against the rhythm and the rules of our existence. I am fascinated by moving images as well as the fact that you can endlessly repeat light and sound, both in film and in memories. During the filming process I create a space and a setting in which comfort and ease are playing together. In my work I let projections, sound, scent and texture communicate with each other. That’s how a hypnotic and infinite feast emerges, an unworldly landscape that multiplies like a virus.”
At its core, Donker’s work consists of a continuously growing organic collection of images – a swirling well from which elements find their way into various media such as video, installations, photo prints on various materials, sound and text. These images often emerge spontaneously and intuitively and are essentially absurd and without order. Donker writes texts, collects objects and other elements, which she combines with the locations where she works, in order to evoke the spontaneous images that make up her work. She executes the entire process by herself: production, sound, directing, camera operation, editing, performance, costumes and the décor. The archive of images, which consists primarily of material that has arisen from intuition and improvisation, is the source of Donker’s eventual work: carefully composed images and installations that are often composed of many layers. By cutting up, repeating and multiplying these film fragments Donker gives her work an absurd stratification, a weird journey into the subconscious. For this she combines analogue and digital images. The accumulation of material from her archive offers a softened, unreal version of reality, which protests against the harsh High Definition quality by which the world is currently being captured. After the editing and composing of the photo- and video material, a translation to the physical space is made. Both in her films as well as in her installations, light is one of the most important factors. The reflection of the projection makes the space come to life and turning off the light makes the boundaries of the space disappear.
An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com
Hello Iris and welcome to WomenCinemakers: we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of
questions regarding your background. You have a solid formal training and you studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam and the Royal Academy of Art, the Hague: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how would you describe the influence of your cultural substratum and