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We humans - with a family resemblance to the stars we're made of - all are part of a whirling loop in which everything is continuously constructed and deconstructed. A white fountain is connected to a black hole and we are situated somewhere in between, moving towards the black hole into the white fountain again. We humans and our objects go through different interconnected stages which further evolution and devolution. The graph gets steeper and steeper as our culture and nature evolves and devolves towards a post-human entity relating in a radically different way to their surroundings. Unlike in the past - where complex kosmologies were drawn into the sand or carved in cave walls and believed in - we are now in a more secular culture in which we make more of a distinction between fiction and reality. Four major cultures were created through interaction and crashes, with pop culture dominating, randomly absorbing elements from the four underground cultures. My goal would be to follow the latest developments in all four cultures, and bring these to the fore in a more balanced way, in both film and theatre. This way I hope to broaden people's awareness of the meaning of that equally mysterious and logical kosmos that surrounds us.

WHIRL Productions is an independent freelance company which aims at creating films, theatre and games that help bring about a whirl of positive change: we initiate and collaborate on artistic and educational projects that are rooted in deep ecology and transdisciplinary inquiry, developing a mindset that results in better-informed life decisions and relatively more equality in our kosmos and world.

WHIRL was founded in 2009 by director/producer Bouke Mekel and is currently housed in De Biotoop bordering the city of Groningen. WHIRL mainly works with artists and educators and engages in creating media for clips, portraits and scapes, documentaries and fiction films, multimedia performances and games. These productions
generally entail the editing and fine-tuning of self-/co-created scripts/prose/poetry, visual art/photography/cinematography, music/sound and choreographies. Each of these services can be provided, separately or fused with one another.

S t a t e m e n t / M o d u s--O p e r a n d i

1. Art

We think anything can be art and art is about anything. We agree with Marcel Duchamp, who asked himself the following fundamental rhetorical question: "Peut-on faire des oeuvres qui ne soient pas d'art?" (“Can one make works that are not considered art?”). Once we start creating objects in the name of the fundamental why-question, we destruct or construct culture and nature. The resulting oeuvres are cultural and increasingly natural as well. That is to say, we're now on the verge of creating intriguing, beyond credible, verisimilar cavernous valleys and carnal dolls. Our possibilities for (de-)culturalisation / (de-)naturalisation are seemingly endless until we consider a work finished and take our hands off it, and/or otherwise until the black hole(s) have deconstructed all of creation, with white fountain(s) emitting star dust once again.
We think until then, we as humans and emerging post-human entities will continue to have an inherent need to be challenged by art, moderately and radically.

2. What Happened In Real Life (W.H.I.R.L.)

As time progresses, the eye of our personal whirls move through the real world and fictional kosmos and recrds all it encounters. It whirls reality into fiction and fiction into reality. The world is a theatre that is increasingly mediatised, with more and more opportunities for tragicomical (docu)fictional uni-, multi-, inter- and transmedia storytelling. On the basis of the raw edges of the eye of WHIRL's voyages, works are created and exposed to public members of society, who proceed to interpret them and, thereby, finish the artworks and integrate them into the(ir) view of the kosmos and world.