HABITAT

Heleen Blanken’s installation HABITAT, as part of Sonar in collaboration with We Are Europe and Digilogue, is open to visitors at Zorlu PSM until October 31st.

Heleen Blanken is an Amsterdam-based artist working on cinematography, installation, new media and sculpture. The artist, who produces her works in a multidisciplinary manner, focuses heavily on the relationship between the human race and nature and works on exploring the different layers of our perception of nature. The artist, who previously exhibited her works at the Nxt and Stedelijk Museums as well as Gropius Bau Berlin, La Gaîté Lyrique, Gallery Ron Mandos, Musée d’art contemporain and Ars Electronica, is in Istanbul for the first time within the scope of Sonar with HABITAT. 

HABITAT is an installation that grows in parallel with the flow of time, using the nature archive of Leiden’s Naturalis, which uses the 3D scanning method. The installation, which is carried out with the help of invisible sensors that use a large number of parameters, is also able to interact with the audience. One of the main questions Heleen asks at HABITAT, where graphics, sculptures, sensors, sounds and landscapes turn into a layered experience, is “What would it be like if nature had been destroyed and we had to remember it digitally?” Aiming to break the usual analogue-digital and nature-technology dualities, Heleen actually creates a spatial installation that suggests that the media and realities that we position opposite each other can behave in an intertwined and blended manner.

Aiming to provide a different perspective to our way of perceiving and seeing nature that is outside of traditional ideas, HABITAT is based on the endless interaction between humans and nature and examines the main structure of our relationship based on the past, present and future that we have with our habitat.  It is possible for us to experience a re-creation of the reality of our relationship with nature and to ask ourselves questions about the depth, the future and the transformation of this relationship.