Caravaggio (I)

Presentation in the context of Open Studios at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, NL. May 2025.

The question lingers: can a machine, if misused, produce something other than torment?
In Caravaggio, the notion of a baroque fold comes into play—an aesthetic and philosophical framework that unfolds in specific ways to bring forth meaning through the complexity of ornamentation. Baroque forms emerge, not as mere decorations, but as vital expressions of the innate human experiences: Caravaggio stands in favour of the baroque against efficacy.
Through a mode of working with the machine that holds on to the fringes of the institution, nearly exiting it—a form of labouring with the undesired machine contains the dual processes of forming and deforming— Caravaggio is striving to illuminate woundedness, seeking to connect the stark reality of internal wounds with the wounds that exist outside; an infrastructural decay represented by breakdown, enslaving desire under a form of power that it unwillingly constitutes, reducing people to their function through an advanced labour division on a molecular scale—disappearing them.
Caravaggio does not seek coalitions; rather, it manoeuvres through the tumultuous landscape of violence, asking what embodiments of love can exist in a world so saturated in forced and forceful exiting, which shows itself as displacement yet also, sinisterly, as forced inclusion; inclusion as incarceration? A hedgerow may be beautifully crafted yet reflects an underlying disorder. Desire belongs, intrinsically, to the infrastructure.

Dedicated to Derek Jarman and Marina Vishmidt

With the support of Knecht-Drenth Fonds (via het Cultuurfonds)