The KOKRA family, an artist collective of line kramer and marjolijn kok, uses humor, respectful engagement and microactivism to stretch all kinds of pigeonholing, including the concept of 'family'. Roel Meelkop talks to them about family formation, collaboration, queer thinking and critical social interventions.
Roel Meelkop: You call yourselves the KOKRA family, where does this name come from and what is its background?
KOKRA family: In fact, it is the result of a struggle. People see us as a couple, not as a family, because we don’t have children. As a queer couple, people don’t expect children either, so we remain a couple to them. For us, the KOKRA family is a way to show that we are indeed a family, just a different kind of family, one that we have chosen ourselves and that we can change in composition. So it is actually a nickname. There is also prejudice if you are not a traditional family, it is quickly thought that you have more time than a father or mother, simply because you have made different choices. The fact that we want to spend our time in a different way than raising children does not mean that it can automatically be assumed that we have more time. Our family is a construction, but it requires just as much time and dedication as the nuclear family.
Our own family formation started in 2013, on Fogo Island, during our first joint residency. Marjolijn is trained as a theoretical archaeologist, Line has a training in architectural design in addition to a training as a furniture maker. For the residency we decided to work together as artists for the first time. We make very different work, from a different work process, but during the residency it became clear to us that we wanted to make something together. The intention of this Canadian residency is to have contact with the local community in the village, but the studio on Fogo Island is a black box on the coast, overlooking the sea. You can only get there via a path over the rocks, on foot. Although our residence was located in the village, we really wanted to use our work to make contact. That drove us to realize something together, to start together. In order to make the work accessible, we decided to execute it on the outside wall of the studio, so that it could be seen from far away. The final work, The Pink Gaze, is a three by six meter bright pink mural on the black background of the original wall. On the one hand it refers to our queerness and on the other hand to the small lookouts for hunters that are all over the coast. They are called 'gaze' there. It also reflects on institutions like the 'white cube', on the idea of a family, with our queer vision of it. It made us think emphatically about our own position as artists, but also as human beings.
MRI: Would you say that the residency on Fogo Island challenged you to step out of the studio space together to connect with the local residents?
KF: Absolutely. When we arrived, all the curtains of the studio were closed. There was a “Do not disturb” sign on the window, while the actual purpose of this residency was to connect with the community. To start, we first removed all the curtains and put an “Open” sign outside. Finally, at the end, we organized an open day with food and drinks and invited everyone in the village. In the end, a total of sixty people came. We also talked a lot about our work, which of course stood out quite a bit and even acted as a kind of beacon. People were curious and wanted to know more about it. That required commitment from our side, but also from that of the residents, so it was definitely mutual. In all fairness, we should mention here that local residents were paid to show us around the island, that was part of the residency. In that way, contact was more or less enforced. That is why we chose to talk to people on the street during our daily walk, to get to know the local community a little better.
We later cancelled a residency in Brazil because we were not convinced that we could make a meaningful and respectful contribution to the contact there. For us it is very important that there are opportunities for both sides equally and that was certainly not the case in Brazil. Then an inequality arises that we cannot justify.
MRI: But then you're actually talking about your own discomfort, aren't you? As a rich Westerner you have significantly more privileges than the residents there.
KF: That is true. In Brazil, we were supposed to enter into a dialogue with the original inhabitants of the area as part of the residency, but guided by the organization. That is a bit of a friction, just as some inhabitants of Fogo Island were also paid for their efforts. There is not much wrong with that in itself, but wouldn't it be better to pay people fairly for their products and labor? We try to make these choices consciously in our daily lives and to embed that in our work. In doing so, we want to be careful not to become too preachy. It is difficult to stay on the right side of the line between artist and world improver.
MRI: In that context, it is interesting to look at your work Gossip Free Zone. In it, you explicitly take a stand for inclusivity and non-imposed safety. The pictographic imagery of the work is clear and communicatively strong. It is a clear call against harmful gossip and for positive social relationships. The work is hung up on signboards throughout the city of Rotterdam in order to create a physical zone in which gossip has no place. Are you still on an activist level with that, or not?
KF: That's right, it's a work that's on the edge. It actually started with the municipality of Rotterdam creating environmental zones, where you're no longer allowed to drive with older cars. At the same time, we live next to the mooring where gigantic cruise ships emit the equivalent of three hundred trucks per hour. From that rather distorted perspective, we wondered whether we shouldn't also look at the mental health of the people of Rotterdam. We're not talking about emissions in dust particles, but about what people tangibly think about each other. That's the importance of the work, even though quite a few people objected to the fact that we limited the zone (and thus freedom). We kept the same zone as the environmental zone to make a point. At four access roads to the city centre, we placed traffic signs with the text Gossip Free Zone and a directional arrow. Of course, the whole world should be a gossip-free zone in which everyone respects each other.
This work also arose from our shared vision, which we call queer and which is about people not being framed immediately, which of course happens everywhere, on the street, at school, at work, you name it. We want to create space with it to enter into relationships in an open way. It is also a way for us to remain aware of assumptions and prejudices, because we have them too. We are not innocent, nobody is. That is why we find these kinds of social projects interesting and then it actually does not matter that much whether you organize that within art or within other disciplines. That is also possible within science, only within art it is possible to keep it playful, without immediately institutionalizing it. That creates space for research and experiment. For us that is precisely exciting as a collaboration, hence the KOKRA family. It keeps us sharp because you enter into dialogue or discussion with each other. It connects us, while you also help each other in your growth through mutual criticism. You can see it as the difference between a solo musician and a band, working together always produces a different result than when you do it alone. For us, the KOKRA family is mainly about listening to each other and creating work together from there.
MRI: In your work, the term queer comes up a lot. What does queer mean to you?
KF: For us, queer means that we no longer (want to) think in binary categories. That goes much further than just the distinction between man and woman, for example. We are a couple, consisting of two women. Yet we do not call ourselves lesbian, because we are much more than just that. We are women, but also human, artist, sister. You cannot summarize that in the term lesbian couple. For us, being queer is much more inclusive, a concept that is stripped of categories and contradictions. For us, queer thinking means that we want to be aware of our identity, but in a critical way. In practice, it means that we ask ourselves how we arrive at all kinds of classifications; how do they arise and how does that translate into existing power structures?
MRI: Does this mean you are striving for an identity-free world?
KF: No, that is not how we see it, it rather means that you are aware of how this works, how you can or cannot use your identity within power structures. If people are strongly attached to their identity, that is fine, some may really need it. Our ideal is the awareness of this, how identities differ and how they are used in power structures. It is very easy to make distinctions and then judge them positively or negatively. But in doing so you immediately put things in boxes, you divide them. This belongs here, that belongs there, before you know it you create enormous segregation. Take weeds: this is a weed, that is not. In doing so it is immediately dismissed, you limit its possibilities in advance. We think that this is very reductionist. Categorization automatically entails a hierarchy. We find this morally questionable, as if something can only be good or bad. We want to get rid of it, that division limits everything and everyone too much. It starts at school with mathematics and girls or handicrafts and boys, as if those categories exclude each other in advance. A division is then immediately made, without the children themselves having any idea of it. It remains strange that it is decided for you whether or not a skill suits you based on your gender. Although this is not deliberately malicious, it is seriously limiting for all those children who do not fit into a box. We think that you have to be very careful with this, precisely because children are so easily influenced. And children naturally want to belong somewhere, they are very sensitive to that. Before you know it, you are depriving people of the opportunity to freely develop their identity at a very young age.
MRI: Isn't it very important for children and young people to join or oppose something in order to develop their identity?
KF: If you choose to do so yourself, that is fine, everyone is influenced by something, and peer pressure is inevitable. But only if that can happen out of free will and not because you have been encouraged or even forced to do so by others. Suppose you grow up in a society that lets you make all these choices yourself, then that need to belong or not belong somewhere is probably a lot less. So it is actually not a problem to have an identity, but preferably without pitting it against another.
For us it is much more important to connect with your environment, to enter into relationships and to cherish them, not only with other people, but also with animals, plants, in fact everything around you. So the relationships you enter into determine who you are. That does not mean that you should not judge or assess, that is necessary in life. It is impossible to constantly weigh everything new, then you will not survive, literally. It is a balancing act, in which you have to be careful that you approach some things simply on the basis of experience in a certain way, while you weigh other things again and again. That is not easy, we also sometimes fall prey to one-sided thinking, sometimes we are also guilty of lazy thinking. But we do our best not to let that dominate, as is now happening through algorithms, unfortunately we no longer have any control over that. They confirm patterns and preferences and therefore also prejudices, that is of course now widely known. Data is therefore not neutral by default. It is not commercially interesting to program in those algorithms for diffusion and diversity, that is far too complicated. Data collection is done on such a large scale precisely because it can be used to make money, not to become wiser from it.
MRI: For you, data collection is the subject of several works, the Inventories. How does that differ from commercial data collection?
KM: In our Inventories we actually do the exact opposite: we try to collect neutral data, from ordinary families. In these works the relationships between people and things are central. With Marjolijn's background as an archaeologist in mind, we wondered whether it is possible to reconstruct the life of an average family in an average place of residence based on their things, just as is customary in archaeology. To do this, we have made an inventory of the families' belongings in both cases, as is also done in archaeology: everything is categorized and numbered according to shape, weight, size, color, etc. All according to general scientific and above all objective standards. In this way we have compiled databases that are actually so arbitrary that hardly anything can be derived from them, only in a very general sense. The result is a catalogue of all objects, photographed as precisely and neutrally as possible, with a large amount of data. In fact, it has been divided into boxes to the extreme, so extreme that you can't really do anything with it anymore.
The side-effect is that the families in question get a wonderful overview of their belongings, in which they can see what they actually have. We also clean everything completely and put it back in exactly the same place after research. Unlike archaeologists, we do not make a story of our research, because the families are still there, so there is no need for it. You can then ask yourself to what extent our prehistoric history, written by archaeologists, is correct. They are dependent on interpretation, which is guided by our own narrow-mindedness. A male skeleton with a lot of gold in the grave is then a king, a female skeleton is then the wife of the king. But why not the other way around? We are not trying to deny science here, but even in that field we cannot escape our prejudices and assumptions, which originate from the present, no matter how much science tries to remain objective. By omitting interpretation in our work, we actually give the viewer the choice of doing it himself or herself, or not. In any case, we do not let an algorithm loose on it.
We started the Inventories in Iceland, in a family barn that stored unused items from five generations. It was a huge barn with partitions for sheep and horses, which were no longer living there. The various partitions were completely filled with discarded items, from old household goods to tools and parts. So hardly anything is thrown away there and there is a reason for that. In the winter, the location is inaccessible, so if something breaks, you can look for replacement parts in the barn for repairs. Every family has such a barn and if you don't have a replacement yourself, you call one of the neighbors to see if they have anything. So saving makes sense, if not for yourself, then for someone else. That is why we came up with the idea of making a textual description of this inventory. In the end, we only managed to finish one aisle, and then our time there was up. Later, we made a number of these Inventories, each with a different visual result.
MRI: This work also came about during a residency. How important are residencies for you?
KF: In order to be able to work together, a residency is almost necessary. In daily life, we hardly get around to it because of our own work, during a residency there is time and focus possible, which is usually lacking. We mainly used the Icelandic residency to think about what we wanted to do together. Here we mainly worked on our conceptual basis. This residency was also intended for that, making something was not expected. It was so remote there that when you picked up in Reykjavik you had to do two weeks of shopping to survive. That also made it possible to think calmly, because you no longer had to do the shopping. That is how we were able to further develop the KOKRA family, partly thanks to the generosity of an Icelandic residency. We want to continue that generosity in the KOKRA family, by working collectively.
