
Joris Van de Moortel
The ephemeral joys of the body, 2016

Musician and artist Joris van de Moortel creates process-driven works with continuously changing components. He often incorporates musical elements: the piece Hit the Snare, Don’t you Dare (2008) is an encased drum set, and The Shortest Song Goes On and On (2011) was, in part, a musical performance. Van de Moortel describes his works as relics and seizes any opportunity to create new meaning from materials originally intended for other purposes. In the 2010 exhibition “Like a Hurricane (you are like),” van de Moortel explored the idea of planned chaos, re-exhibiting several of his pieces to look as if they had been wrecked by a hurricane. “After an exhibition and sometimes during it, I destroy, burn or run a bulldo¬zer over the work to then recycle the rubble into new works,” he has said. “Undoing becomes part of doing.”


Musician and artist Joris van de Moortel creates process-driven works with continuously changing components. He often incorporates musical elements: the piece Hit the Snare, Don’t you Dare (2008) is an encased drum set, and The Shortest Song Goes On and On (2011) was, in part, a musical performance. Van de Moortel describes his works as relics and seizes any opportunity to create new meaning from materials originally intended for other purposes. In the 2010 exhibition “Like a Hurricane (you are like),” van de Moortel explored the idea of planned chaos, re-exhibiting several of his pieces to look as if they had been wrecked by a hurricane. “After an exhibition and sometimes during it, I destroy, burn or run a bulldo¬zer over the work to then recycle the rubble into new works,” he has said. “Undoing becomes part of doing.”