Living Colour Flies

STARTEL (artist duo Jan Starken and Mark Schotel) is fascinated by life in all its manifestations, but also its irrevocable finitude. The fly has been a recurring element in their oeuvre for years. The virtually unstoppable urge to live of these insects that only have 7 days of life is fierce and intense. The fly also fits into an iconographic tradition in which the fly invariably represents (approaching) death. STARTEL uses the blue blowfly (Calliphora Vomitoria). After years of working, breeding and experimenting with this fly, they are able to influence their behavior so that it becomes part of their installations.

The Living Color Flies installation at BioArt Laboratories not only focuses on the life of the fly, but also aims to capture the traces of this life. In previous installations such as The Meaning of Flies (opening exhibition Verbeke Foundation 2007), traces were captured daily in fluorescent paint and in Time Flies from 2009 these were captured in India ink.
In the Living Color Flies installation, the traces of flies will become visible through different colors of ink on a long strip of paper on a roll. The image this creates is a kind of timelapse, a time graph in organic disorder comparable to a Jackson Pollock.
A snapshot of life. The life of several generations of the Calliphora Vomitoria.

The visual art installation Living Colour Flies can be characterized as conceptual. Our installations (and also this special site specific built installation) are the design of ideas. Ideas in wich art, nature and science merges into a new era.