Everything is running smoothly. Your life is in order. You know what your future holds. In fact, everything is settled. But what if this safety is also very oppressive? Do you feel comfortable in that safe place? Don't you miss the unknown ... the adventure? The dilemma between staying where you are or getting up and moving on, was the reason for Arjan to make SENTIENT.
Arjan had a beautiful apartment, a car and a good job. In short: a nice life. Everything was arranged, but still something was missing. This inspired Arjan to reflect on the duality of safety and insecurity, of predictability and adventure. Does the known offer us enough perspective and is the unknown really as unsafe as we often think? In the desire to stretch his comfort zone, he sold his house and went with his gut. Yet doubt regularly struck, was his choice the best and how do you know?
For Arjan that is SENTIENT: observe and decide based on your feelings but always with a little doubt in the background. Because sometimes your feelings can also fool you. What do you release of yourself to others and which things do you keep to yourself, safely locked away? Perhaps you recognise that feeling, with some people you feel more at ease than with others. So you tell your friends more about yourself than a stranger on the street.
Arjan has experienced that coming out of the closet was less scary than he thought for years. His feelings chose for the fear, but in the end his head overcame the fear. Arjan wanted to capture this feeling in an image for which he knew the perfect location, an old bunker at the National Military Museum in Soesterberg.
SENTIENT is about the process in your head, the dilemma between feeling safe and the oppressive safety that you usually cause yourself.