The performing machine

In this paper, art historian Sanneke Huisman and curator Sven Schlijper-Karssenberg discuss Jorrit Paaijmans’s drawing practice based on his recent performance installation Radical Drawing Device (RDD). Huisman and Schlijper-Karssenberg show the important role notions of physicality and craftsmanship play in Paaijmans’s hyperdrawing practice and demonstrate the ways in which Paaijmans uses these notions to question mechanization and craftsmanship in relation to the artistic practice and discipline of drawing. RDD, the case study of this text, is a tattoo machine made by Paaijmans that can only perform one action: applying a straight line onto the artist’s arm. The authors argue that with RDD, Paaijmans continues his research into physicality, as well as reflects on the status of drawing in relation to technology, time and the passage of time. The paper further shines light on the ways in which the work encourages reflection on being human in a technological society.