Clarinde Wesselink

Clarinde Wesselink is a choreographer and visual artist with an interdisciplinary practice. In Intro, she focuses on the acoustic sounds of a place, exploring how these sounds affect her body and perception. By attuning herself to the rhythms of her surroundings, she develops a way of experiencing the world that centres on relationship, attention and connection.

What is Clarinde Wesselink up to? Follow it here! ⛳︎

In 2026, I developed a choreographic sound installation at Museum Buitenplaats Kasteel Wijlre during a two-month artist residency with Intro in Situ.
The work investigated how choreography can emerge in relation to the sounds, movements and changing conditions of the forest at the edge of the estate. Together with sound artist
BJ Nilsen, I worked with recordings made at different times of day: robins at sunrise, falling leaves, and the sound of a motorbike passing beyond the grounds.
Through speakers placed in the landscape, these recordings were returned to the locations where they had originally been captured. Sounds from different moments in time began
to overlap: a recording made at night could be heard during the day, while recorded birdsong merged with the birds present in that moment.

Within this shifting soundscape, I developed a choreography based on listening and responding to the environment. Rather than treating the landscape as a setting for the performance, I approached it as an active element shaping its rhythm, movement and duration.
During Cultura Nova in Heerlen, I invited visitors to experience the work as a choreographic sound installation and to attend to their surroundings through their own bodies. By bringing recorded and present sound together, the work asks how perception changes when different temporalities coexist, and how a landscape itself can become a choreographic force.
Below you can find some more insight into my research through short videos, texts, drawings and a whatsapp conversation.

From my book at the edge of connection, 2026, n.g.k. Publications.

5 am, practice.
buitenplaats Kasteel Wijlre

From my book at the edge of connection, 2026, n.g.k. Publications.

Below is a small selection from the sound atlas I created during my residency. The drawings show how sound can be understood as a physical phenomenon: it can make movement within the body perceptible, create tension and shift our attention. They were made in response to the calls and songs of birds including the grey heron, chaffinch, robin, blackbird, goldcrest, woodpecker and blue tit, as well as various traffic sounds and changing weather conditions.

Each drawing translates rhythm, repetition, intensity, direction and silence into its own collection of lines, dots, circles and concentrations. The large areas of white space are as important as the marks themselves: they convey pauses, distance and anticipation. Together, the drawings form a choreographic atlas of how sound continually sets the body and its surroundings in motion.

EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC SOUND ART