Nicholas Dertien

Defending
Video of action on beach, sand, water
Spring 2006








Drawn Lines
Video of action on beach, sand, water
Spring 2006



Q: How does the idea of threshold affect your work?

A: It’s the surface that you break though. It’s the space in the door way, the line you cross from occupying one space to occupying another, it’s the pregnant moment. When I decided to make a work about threshold, I want to show the energy that can be released by going though, passing though it and then again there’s the thresholds that you shouldn’t pass though. You shouldn’t cut though your skin, you shouldn’t leave the surface of your body. I read Anne Rice’s The Tale of the Body Thief, [in which] a character has the ability to fly out of his body to leave his body and occupy someone else’s body. It was an agreed mutual act in some cases and in other cases it was definitely body theft. And that’s fascinating to me too, not taking someone else’s body but um, but to be able to step out of your own skin, to be able to will your essence to come out of your body, be able to move though space on the other side of your skin, to be able to look back at your self at that moment to see where your were and now where you are.

The idea of a “lifetime” or for my current thinking a “lifespan” has for a long period been an interest of mine. Death as the end of a lifespan in particular could be a useful concept for relating to my work. I feel that a piece that has a implicate death, is seen to be more alive before that death. The beach pieces involve such an interval of time.