Yngve Holen - ETOPS : HEADACHE

Yngve Holen’s fourth ETOPS magazine “Headache” is concentrated on neuroscience and has been edited together with Matthew Evans.

Technologies that enable humans to travel, to live for longer, or to complete daily functions are the subjects of Holen’s sculptures. While his work is characterised by his use of machines and industrial spare parts that are used for, around and by the human body, the body itself is almost always evoked only in its absence. The content of ETOPS Headache is a discussion with unnamed scientists who work with new technologies that interact with neurons in the brain. The back cover of the magazine contains the questions ​“But what is a concept?” and ​“How does it emerge?”. The answer, from one scientist, has to do with ​“how the brain encodes contents at a certain level of abstraction so that you can establish semantic relations among the different elements of this content…”. As such, concepts help humans to comprehend information in a meaningful way. With his focus on the competing LEGO tribes in The Legends of Chima, one of the questions posed in Holen’s exhibition at Modern Art is, what kind of concepts are introduced to the developing brains of children, and in what way does this guide their understanding of the world around them?