Sophie Bates (b.1993, London) is an visual artist based in Rotterdam who works with video, performance, photography and live events. Her practice is about exploring intimate experiences through the way people act such as body language, humour, performances of courtesy and the failure of language. She is a vigilant observer and uses observation as a springboard to begin her process. Her practice is a way to understand or make sense of experiences and go back to them. She is concerned with understanding herself and others better through her art practice by making connections.
She is part of WET, a Rotterdam-based collective and project space for artists’ moving image. We provide a platform for exhibitions, screenings and workshops, with a focus on artworks which challenge existing orthodoxies, and propose alternative historical, political and aesthetic perspectives. We host a monthly online screening programme, accompanied by a podcast. WET also acts as a support structure for both its members and the artists with who we work.
Love on Piotrkowska 2023 - Amidst my own heart breaks over the years, I began setting people up on dates and filming them on their first romantic encounter. I did this, not because I'm a particularly gifted match-maker, but as a way to connect with others about their dating and relationship experiences.
I always end up feeling more responsible and invested towards the daters than I probably should. Again, not because I strongly desire to bring a long-lasting couple into being. Actually, the very thought of that makes me cringe terribly. When it comes to matters of the heart, it becomes clear how sensitive and perplexed we actually are.
Being filmed on a date always adds another layer of vulnerability and perhaps something unpredictable. By filming dates, I observe how the dater’s presentation of the self is performed and how we as watchers interpret the performance.
Watching how other people interact and perform can also be a guide for me (and you!) For me, the act of filming de-constructs social etiquette, both around us and within T.V. dating shows. Throughout this dating project, not only do I hear the daters’ experience of their encounter, but many other people’s experiences when I am making and exhibiting the work. At its core, it’s a way to learn about each other’s love lives, desires, hopes and fears.
The exhibition “Love on Piotrkowska” at Pracownia Portretu consists of a series of paintings which act as traces from previous dates in Rotterdam and a new film of a date shot in Łódź.
De Magnet – Part 1 2023 - 'De Magnet - Part 1’ is a film about a group of friends who go on a camping trip. The film introduces the main characters through video clips and photo montage. Then you witness a camping holiday with the five friends in the Netherlands during the summer of 2020. The film highlights friendships and conversations based around social interactions lubricated by alcohol and drugs and around leisure activities.
The group is a mix of internationals and native Dutch in their late twenties to early thirties. The conversations are about the environment, politics, sex and their love lives. The film is a record of a time and place with a close group of friends. The intimacy and the presence of the camera create a fluid and contrasting relation to the documentary form or other, more stage video pieces. Through bringing the camera along with me, I continue to ask myself who am I? And where do I belong?
Seasonal Dates, 2022 - Seasonal Dates -Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter is an experimental video series in which two people are set up on a blind date to be recorded by myself (camera woman) and my micro crew (WET film).
Mimicking the structure of a T.V. dating show, the ‘daters’, are mic’d up and meet live on camera at a snack location in Rotterdam. The camera follows them down the street in one take from in front as they engage in a conversation, whilst walking and consuming their snack.
Each date take place in a different season with a corresponding snack. For Summer they had ice cream, Winter - Olliebollen, Autumn - fries and Spring, a hotdog. The four dates are shot on location in Rotterdam over the course of the year. The set up is a genuine attempt to pair people I know or have met recently to find romantic connections. The conversation and body language reveals the ‘daters’ romantic, platonic or disinterest in the other.
Outfit Days, 2021 - The image is a selection of pages from the inside of the magazine.
During 2020 and 2021, like so many other people around the world, I worked from home. I worked in my bedroom for 6 months, next to my bed and beside my clothes rails. I decided to photograph myself in a different outfit from my wardrobe each morning. This was a routine that attempted to help me “function” from home. It meant I had to get dressed every day regardless of what I was doing or if I had anywhere to go.
The magazine includes all the dates I was working from home and all the days I did and did not take a self-portrait. The project is called Outfit Days, which is a sort of working title that seemed to fit and never got replaced by anything more stylish. The design of the magazine is done by a great, old friend and designer, Lucy Tomlinson, based in London, who is also an excellent Pilates teacher.
It is printed on glossy paper and an edition of 100.
Lamp Post Diner, 2020 - “Lamp Post Diner” is a re-enactment of an online article “Cop Left Something For Pregnant Waitress, Then She Ran To Her Boss In Tears''-which appeared as clickbait on my web browser. The article tells the true story of a pregnant waitress and a police officer in a diner in New Jersey, USA which I re- told word for word and created an extensive shot list to be re-performed. The re-enactment brings together a New Jersey story, a British Police Officer and Recreatiecentrum Oostervant cafeteria in Rotterdam in my local neighbourhood. I am fascinated by real-life stories and the manner in which they are reported by mainstream media. I select stories based on my feelings toward them, stories which resonate with me; and a belief that there is something about a story worth retelling in another form, or that there is something to say about its existing form.
South West to South East (London), 2020 - South West to South East (London) is a raw home-video style video of 30 minutes. It’s structured by a car journey with my family through London, from my parents house to my brother and his fiance’s new flat.
The footage out the window is interspersed with different places and moments from my life, from celebrating with old friends in London, visiting my Grandma (an artist) in a care-home, my mother rehearsing in a church a reading for her son’s wedding, my father playing piano, the sun and the moon from my bed in my apartment in Rotterdam and interiors of my grandparent’s house. Through bodily gestures, performed acts of courtesy and the presence of a discreet camera, the video unravels social relations between family, friends and an drive to be an artist.
video stills
Full version: https://vimeo.com/444158878 password: wet2020
Press: https://rotterdamartwriting.org/Lili-Huston-Herterich-Comforts
Self-Portrait, Leg-Face, Between Masturbation, 2020 - Three black and white prints to accompany the video SW to SE (London). The photographs were taken in 2015. I left them on the unfinished film roll inside the camera until last year when I finished the film at my brother’s wedding.
Accompanying Video installation: SW to SE (London)
Nordzee/North Sea, 2020 - In Nordzee/North Sea, myself and collaborator Nick Thomas take on the role of roving interviewers on an overnight ferry between the Netherlands and the UK. Passengers on the ferry muse on their journey, daily worries and the role of friendship in their lives, producing a snapshot of a temporary community created by their enforced proximity to one another. The use of the ‘talking heads’ format to create a portrait of a place takes inspiration from examples of interview-films made by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Pier Paulo Pasolini and Sharon Hayes.
Women Eating on Camera, 2018 - Women Eating on Camera (2018) is a live performance and video recording of a series of women eating various food items (snacks). For my graduation show at the Piet Zwart Institute the installation was set up on a mezzanine like a photo shoot, or reality TV set, with a chair, lights, microphone, camera, t-shirts and bags of snacks. It could be watched live by a small audience on the mezzanine. In addition there was a live stream onto a large monitor below the mezzanine which could be seen by audience members as they entered the exhibition space. After the opening night, an edited recording of Women Eating on Camera (recorded version) was played on the monitor.
Sophie Bates “Women Eating on Camera” 2018. Installation with live video stream, camera, lights, t-shirts, paper bags, and snacks.
Women Eating on Camera (2018) contends with themes including the social constraints on women eating and acting more generally in public, and the gendered morality surrounding pleasure and indulgence. It also considers the ways in which images of women engaging in consumption are used in contemporary society: from tabloid newspapers to YouTube phenomena such as ‘Mukbang’: online audiovisual broadcast, in which a host consumes food while interacting with an audience.
Through a critical mass of women engaged in the act of eating, the work creates a solidarity, not only between the performers but also with audience members, the figure and image of a woman eating creating an unashamed and empowering everyday spectacle.
Women Eating on Camera was adapted for the International Womxn's Day Celebration as part of Slutwalk at Worm, Rotterdam, 2020
Couples (series) 2018 - Vanessa & Julian is one of a series of ‘Couples’ pieces: performances and videos that involve reproducing transcribed dialogues from reality TV show First Dates. Each couple is chosen for the way they resonated with me, for the way they engendered an empathetic response. The dialogue was re-performed to camera against a white studio backdrop with props including a smoke machine, bubbles and a smartphone. In their re-presentation the conversations of the couples become absurd; a contemplative distance is produced from which the cultural phenomenon of dating shows is rendered as a strange contemporary artefact.
