Erik van der Schaft

Entangled World, Remixed Art

The past used to be selectively remembered and quickly became separate from the present. The present was experienced atomised, splintered, divided into individual parcels. And the future was a guess, with odds of it coming true infinitesimally small.

No more.

The past is now fully retrievable, informing the present and enabling connections between those individual parcels in ways not imagined even just a few years ago. We are no longer forced to live small-scale lives, but can connect ourselves to global experiences, or, at the opposite end, dive deeply into our physique and psyche.

The future can now be predicted with more certainty than Nostradamus, although we’re still going to be wrong most of the time.

We now know everything and everyone is linked on an atomic level, entangled across space and time.

Past, present and future have become one, as have people, machines, animals, molecules and everything in between.

In this entangled world Erik van der Schaft makes entangled art. Mixing classical, modern and futuristic parts of existing artworks into digital collages, Erik considers himself an AJ, an art jockey. Much like DJs, Erik places elements in a new context and in unexpected combinations, leading to something new and, hopefully, engaging.

Erik’s themes include time, space, (dis)connection, distortion versus reality, observation versus participation and stillness versus movement. And silliness, we all need some silliness, don’t we?

From Office to art: Erik creates his collages in Microsoft PowerPoint, showing that even the most everyday and ubiquitous tools can be used to make art. As mundane as PowerPoint may be, but it proves to be a foundation for new outlooks on life.

Art is everywhere and everywhen. Erik shows us some of it.

Erik, who grew up in The Netherland, has worked in the arts, media, sports and entertainment around the world for thirty years, ranging from late night radio talkshows in South Sudan to video art in The Netherlands and football in Indonesia.

At the moment Erik is the director of one of the visitor attractions that’s part of Expo 2020 and he helps out a Dutch-Italian foundation that develops visitor attractions, exhibitions and arts projects with a social dimension.