Beestmaster

The marvel that is Theo Jansens Strandbeests have arrived on South-East Asian shores, thanks to the watch company that couldnt be more aligned with the artist and his vision.

- Mindy Teh

Theo Jansen is showing a group of eager journalists two of his mechanical Strandbeests at the Marina Bay Sands ArtScience Museum, explaining how they seduce each other and procreate with the deadpan earnestness of a BBC naturalist. “It seems like these two are seducing each other,” he says, referring to a video where the two Beests are courting and communicating. “In reality, they cannot reproduce physically and, in fact, they are seducing us (humans).”

He elaborates: “These movies are on YouTube and, since then, many students are infected with Strandbeest ‘disease’. They start building their own Strandbeests and, without knowing it, they are used for reproduction. In this way, you could say that the seduction (via video sharing and social media) is a surviving tool.”

It would be easy to dismiss what the Dutch artist is saying about his creations as a bit of humour, tongue firmly in cheek, were it not for the fact that these kinetic sculptures seem to have taken lives of their own. So powerful and startlingly lifelike are these magnificent creatures, walking gracefully along Jansen’s favourite beach near Delft (short films on YouTube depicting this are constantly shared, and surface time and again on social media – the reproduction that Jansen speaks of ) that one would be quite forgiven for almost imagining a beating heart in each of them.

Really, they are made from ordinary PVC piping, wood and fabric airfoil, powered by nothing more than wind, ingenuity and the power of the imagination. Jansen has gone so far as to accord his sculptures with complete biological life cycles, claiming that they are evolving into intelligent beings.