Springtime by Jeroen Eisinga

Visual artist Jeroen Eisinga tried not to be afraid although he ‘peed in his pants’ the first minutes of his 90-minute long performance, of which Springtime shows the nineteen minute highlights. Eisinga himself is the focal point of a daredevil feat reminiscent of Jack-ass (for young readers) or Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader (for older readers) who recorded several ‘falls’ of driving himself on a bike in a canal or dropping off a roof whilst sitting on a chair. In Springtime the source of potential bodily harm is bees.

After letting himself be covered in queen bee hormones on the upper body, the filmmaker disappears in a sea of small creatures, slowly engulfing his face until nothing remains to be seen but his mouth. Through a single frame, black and white images and no sound, the film is a tableau vivant through which the viewer is subjected to watching the bees in silence, getting closer and closer to obstructing Eisinga’s eyes, nose and mouth. Sometimes, an eye opens itself to stare straight into the camera.

The difference between a Jackass episode and Springtime is solely its form and the nature of the intended shock. Where the first one plays on gloat and enlarges the action, the second is an intellectualization of the same action to which the viewer is guided by the stillness of the presentation. Eisinga becomes a curiosity, a stretching of the moment of danger to be watched with your head slightly tilted.

By Maartje Alders