Expanded Performance: Thomas Heyer & Jakob Kunst

Main page Expanded Performance: click here

Thomas Heyer (1989) and Jakob Kunst (1984) are two young interior designers from The Hague. They met each other during their studies of interior architecture at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague where they both graduated in 2011. They have since then started working together. Work by Thomas Heyer can be characterized by an analytical stance towards the organization of all aspects within a building. By designing routes within buildings, for example, he subtly guides the user or visitor through a space. Nothing is thereby left to chance, and this results in a balanced final product. Jakob Kunst on the other hand usually starts his works from a concept. By magnifying one aspect of a situation, or translating it into a spatial intervention, he wants to influence and stimulate the viewer or visitor to think about the meaning of their own environment.

For Expanded Performance, Heyer and Kunst have created a project in which they started from the premise of the visitors' presence. When a visitor enters Stroom during Expanded Performance, he or she immediately becomes part of the exhibition. The threads hanging from the ceiling fill the entire space, which also makes the visitor responsible for claiming the space that they need for themselves. During Expanded Performance the threads will slowly make room for different events that will take place. Because of this, the installation will slowly but surely dissolve and make room for the new entrance area also designed by Heyer and Kunst. While one intervention gradually disappears, a new one appears.

Thomas Heyer & Jakob Kunst, 2012
photo: Eric de Vries, courtesy Stroom Den Haag

Opening Expanded Performance
photo: © Thomas Heyer & Jakob Kunst

Thomas Heyer & Jakob Kunst, installation of the work at Stroom
photo: Stroom Den Haag

design Thomas Heyer & Jakob Kunst
photo: courtesy the artists