Fish Factory

Jikke Lesterhuis was born in 1997 in Enschede, the Netherlands and is currently based in Amsterdam. She works with different media such as animation (2D and 3D), field recordings & sound design, drawings, poetry and installations, making her work multidisciplinary.

She has spent the month of May 2023 with us here at the Fish Factory, working on her project titled “Wind Dwellers”, an explorative crossed media installation, oscillating between different worlds; the physical and digital domain, nature and culture, macrocosm and the microcosm, man and the universe. It explores the sensory capacity of the wind, that can be perceived by our bodies in multiple ways. The animation questions the extent to which humans can identify with the environment around us and what effect this has on our behavior and our feelings of responsibility towards the planet and the challenges it faces.

Animation

The landscape of the animation is based on topographic data of the mountains in Stöðvarfjörður, released by NASA Earth Observations (NEO).The use of raw natural materials to mimic human features highlights how man and nature are inextricably linked, and how we are more alike than we think. In fact, nature gave birth to all of us. Most of the sounds are field recordings of the area and serve as a sonic representation of Stöðvarfjörður.

Soundscape

The sound carries the story of man and nature and explores the mysterious borderland between the visible and the invisible and the audible and inaudible, touching on the spiritual and psychological aspects of consciousness. The poem binds the visual and sonic landscape and guides you through.

Sculpture

The cave is made of stitched seaweed and algae. The stitching reinforces the connection of something that was once broken but now continues to live in a new, unique, different but fragile semblance, of which we have to take care altogether to keep it from falling apart. The seaweeds transmit light, are translucent, but not transparent, and resemble a leather-like material after drying. The dried seaweeds remind us of how similar we are. The sculpture allows the audience to step into the mysterious borderland between themselves and nature. The physical movement required to view the inside of the cave shows us the way we should look at our surroundings; make ourselves a little smaller with a humble attitude and can only be touched gently. We should not take the planet for granted, as everything around us will continue to live inside of us.

‘Wind Dwellers’ arises from a deep fascination forone of nature’s most powerful yet unpredictable forces; the wind.

Please, visit her website to learn more about this unique and interesting project: https://www.jikkelesterhuis.nl/wind-dwellers

Thank you, Jikke! :)