Ben Schot (born November 15, 1953, Zierikzee, Netherlands) is a Dutch artist, writer, publisher, and freelance curator.
Contents |
From 1981 to 1986 Schot was trained as an artist at the art schools of Rotterdam and The Hague, The Netherlands. His activities cover various disciplines and techniques: drawings, audio and video works, installation art, and performances. As a writer Schot publishes articles and fiction in various magazines. In 2000 Schot founded the publishing house Sea Urchin Editions which publishes works from the avant-garde and counterculture, such as works by Henri Michaux, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Serge Gainsbourg, Vivian Stanshall & Ki Longfellow, and André Breton. Together with Martine Vosmaer Schot translated into Dutch a compilation of Henri Michaux's hallucinatory prose, which was published by Sea Urchin Editions as Beroofd door de ruimte.
Some of the projects organised by Schot are Oulipo (1997) about the French literary movement of the same name, Shells (1997), a project on the museum as an institute at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, Submerge (1997) on the films of surrealist-biologist Jean Painlevé, Towers Open Fire (1998) on the films of William S. Burroughs, and I rip you, you rip me (1998, in collaboration with Ronald Cornelissen) on the radical and psychedelic counterculture of Detroit in the late sixties, early seventies. On various occasions Schot gave lectures and presentations on Sun Ra, on whom he wrote an article as well. As a member of the revolutionary collective The Buggers he staged a Missed Encounter between former Provo leader Roel van Duijn and former chairman of the White Panther Party John Sinclair in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam in 2005. As part of the event Hugh Hopper, Mark Hewins, and Frank van der Kooy were invited by Schot to do a concert at the auditorium of the museum. In 2006 Schot put together an exhibition of material from the archives of the Dutch underground press Cold Turkey Press for the Historical Museum of Rotterdam. In 2008 Schot organized the project Kingdom Come about the notion utopia for the Dutch art institute TENT. The project consisted of an exhibition in which various artists, publishers, and thinkers were invited to react to the concept utopia, a book fair for independent publishers, a discussion with Roel van Duijn, the screening by René van der Voort of the documentary Revisiting Father by Isis Aquarian, (one of Father Yods Wives) Electricity Aquarian (brother of the Source Family) and Evan Wells (college student who did the film) about Father Yod and the Source Family, and a performance of the Japanese musicians Yoshida Tatsuya of the band Ruins (band) and Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple. On several occasions Schot performed with Dutch electro-acoustic group Kapotte Muziek (Frans de Waard, Roel Meelkop, Peter Duimelinks).