Boris Acket (NL)

Boris Acket is a conceptual artist working with sound, light, movement and kinetic sculpture. His research-driven practice looks at the systems that shape how we perceive the world around us, often using natural phenomena such as wind, water, gravity and light as both subject and material. Across permanent and site-specific works, a recurring tension emerges between control and surrender: carefully constructed systems are set in motion, only to become vulnerable to forces that can never be fully controlled.

Research forms the foundation of the practice. Ongoing conversations with philosophers, scientists and researchers feed into works that function as both instruments and environments. They create conditions for prolonged attention, slowing down perception and allowing subtle movements, sounds and changes to become increasingly present. At the same time, the works reflect on the systems through which humans attempt to measure, simulate and control thenatural world, and on what is lost in that process.

Collaboration is central to this approach. Acket’s practice develops through ongoing dialogues across disciplines, from acoustic ecology and philosophy to composition and choreography. Long-term exchanges with acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton and philosopher VictoriaTrumbull have informed the research underlying the work, while collaborations with choreographers Kiani del Valle and Marne and Imre van Opstal explore how kinetic systems can enter into dialogue with the human body. Musical collaborations span Joep Beving, Djrum andFred again.., extending the installations into composition and live performance. These encounters allow works to move between autonomous sculpture, research environment andperformance, while remaining rooted in the same spatial language.

This approach has resulted in works presented across museums, opera houses, festivals andunconventional exhibition spaces, including Stedelijk Museum, Semperoper Ballett, Dark Mofo, Holland Festival and the Barbican and Mutek MX. Acket also works as a curator, most recently co-curating Silence is the Presence of Everything at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, extending theresearch of the studio into dialogue with the practices of other artists and researchers.

The practice is organised around three interconnected ideas: Duration, Amplification and the Infinite Paradox. Duration draws from Henri Bergson’s idea of durée, approaching the present as something layered by memory and anticipation. Through repetition, suspension and gradual transformation, the works attempt to make this experience of time tangible. Amplification describes a method of shifting attention: bringing what normally remains peripheral into the foreground, until a small movement, distant sound or almost invisible change becomes impossible to ignore. The Infinite Paradox sits between these ideas. Technology is used to amplify phenomena that existed long before it: wind, water, light, sound, and gravity. The same tools that increasingly mediate our relationship with the natural world become instruments for revealing how far we have drifted from it.