The Dutch artist Johannes-Harm Hovinga created a special artistic performance. The theme was the 7,705-page Sixth Assessment Report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He sat at a raised table, shoeless and in complete silence. Repeatedly, for six hours straight, without a break except to go to the toilet, he punched holes with a two-hole punch in a stack of coloured papers, turning them into piles of confetti.
The subject of his performance was about one of the most important documents produced by scientists on the climate crisis.
In the end, he punched holes for more than 120 hours, underlining the difficulty of concentrating on the same repetitive motion, an intense activity that led him to take painkillers.
Hovinga carried out this performance in the Arnhem Museum for twenty days, between 22 June and 14 July.
He called his living performance “There’s an Elephant in the Room (The lack of sense of necessity)“, an artistic protest aimed at raising awareness of environmental issues and denouncing the lack of action by politicians.
Hovinga decided to use this title to emphasise the urgency and importance of the climate crisis and the fact that the vast majority of people do not want to give up anything to solve it.
The artist decided to stage an effective protest. He carried out an artistic performance mixed with activism, as he wanted to raise awareness of the climate crisis. For Hovinga, the role of the artist is to make the invisible visible and to give the audience a different perspective.
In fact, Hovinga was surprised by the reaction of museum visitors to his performance. Some students left notes thanking him for his efforts, while other visitors were touched by the artist’s layers of pain.
Saskia Bak, director of the Arnhem Museum, said:
It’s crucial to showcase different perspectives on current topics, so we team up with artists not typically seen in museums. We highlight issues that are relevant in society, such as climate change. Johannes-Harm Hovinga’s performance fits perfectly.
Cover image: culturedeclares.org