Calling From Work

In Calling From Work, Karel van Laere calls his parents while taking a walk. During a three-month stay in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, he would call them once a week. While his parents often had no idea where he was, he knew exactly where they were: in the living room, on the couch, right next to the Wi-Fi router. For the conversation itself, this made no difference, but the contrast between their familiar voices and the diverse locations he found himself in created an absurd kind of reality for him. Calling From Work explores the tension between the small, domestic, and familiar, and the feeling of distance in a global context. How important is it, really, to know exactly where someone is?

About Karel van Laere
For this project Karel was a resident artist at PAIR 2 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Over the years, his artistic practice has focused on what he calls the boundaries of surrender, subjecting his body to various processes. This experiment in relinquishing control is evident in his work Paralysis, which documents 24 hours in which his motionless body is tightly bound to a table. The motionless body is also a central theme in works such as Slow (Taiwan) and Largo, where it glides slowly and statically through different landscapes. In The Non Present Performer, he entrusts his body — placed in a deep state of hypnosis — to the hands of professional dancers and a choreographer.