Sophie Bates

video , Taal , schrijven , Publicatie , performance , Gender , fotografie , Experimenteel , Communicatie , Audiovisueel

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.\r\n\r\nShe 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.

**Enterrement de Vie de Jeune Fille** - (HD-handycam, 1.03:2, 27 mins, soft-focus projection on kefir windows) Enterrement de Vie de Jeune Fille is a study of my female friends from school on a hen weekend (A Bachelorette Party) in the UK. As much as I am an artist on this trip, I am very much part of the antics, the recording process is secondary to having fun. The film brings you right into the antics of the ‘hen do’, the house tour, the logistics, the getting drunk and the interactions of the female friends. Happy Hen! FAREWELL ROTTERDAM As part of a two-person exhibition (together with Ghislain Amar) at BUISNESS, Rotterdam, December 2025

**Do you ever bend over with your mouth open and dribble? (2025)** - ‘Do you ever bend over with your mouth open and dribble?’ is a single-channel video work that unfolds like a late-night diary entry. Filmed in the artist’s Aunt’s garden in Cornwall in 2019, its lo-fi, handheld footage and ambient score by Pauline Anna Strom creates a nocturnal space for oversharing, opacity and introspection. Through fragmented voiceover and slow, shifting visuals, the work explores embarrassment, disclosure and bodily memory. It hovers between intimacy and performance, memory and melodrama, drawing attention to what happens when the private becomes public. Shown as part of Viddy Horrorshow/Daytime Viewing (VHS/DTV) TACO! London, 2025 (Group Exhibition) VHS/DTV is a showreel presentation of artist moving-image across installed, multiple flat TV screens and artist DVD. VHS/DTV brings together moving-image works by 17 artists selected through an open call by TACO! artist staff members Cillian Finnerty, e v, and Denny Kaulbach. Each of the works presented share television as a reference point for video work. Formats like the game show, the chat show, and the ad break are borrowed from, subverted, and reframed as foggily-remembered progenitors of today’s hyper-targeted, short-format, and ‘democratised’ digital moving-image economy. The film will also premiere at the 24th edition of LUFF, Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival 2025. Credits: Camera, Edit, Voice: Sophie Bates Soundtrack: Pauline Anna Strom - Morning Splendor (edited)

**Aspirations (Aspiraciones) 2024** - 'Aspirations' is about the 'Quinceañera' tradition. But since I have only recently learned about them, it's more about me finding out about Quinceañeras, who celebrates it, and who is willing to share their experience or thoughts on it. I found it a fun but important subject, and it seems everyone has something to say about it. It's been a way to connect with people and learn about a cultural aspect of their lives—a chance to meet, hear stories, and perspectives. Maybe it wasn't the best subject to choose unless I'm really serious about it? I did finally witness a Quinceañera—a girl stepping out of a white limo in a stunning dark blue dress. For my film, 'Aspirations' I brought two people together to have a discussion about the Quinceañera tradition. The discussion is in Spanish, and I used a translation tool for English subtitles. Claudia talks about her experience of her own Quinceañera, and Sergio tells a funny experience he had at a Quinceañera as well as going deeper into the complexities around the tradition. CREDITS: With: Claudia Lastiri, Sergio Valdivia Camera 1/Sound/Edit: Sophie Bates Camera 2: Ray Foliente

**A Camping Trip, hippie vibes, 2024** - A Camping Trip 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 relationship 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?

**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 Lódz.

**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

**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 Kieslowski, 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.

Outfit Days Launch

Datum: 15-10-2021 t/m 31-01-2022

Locatie: Keilweg

In samenwerking met: LIFE, Ash Kilmartin

https://www.ashopcalled.life/past-life

Rib Summer Lab

Datum: 01-08-2021 t/m 31-01-2022

Locatie: Rib

In samenwerking met: Matheline Marmy

Instead of casting actors and a lucid script, we follow a nebulous set of actions, pursuing an abstract and experiential journey through the shadow of the Night, in or near the dark Rotterdam. A cinematic composition will ultimately unfold from our crepuscular stay.

https://www.ribrib.nl/projects/summer-lab

Everything is in Everything

Datum: 22-07-2021 t/m 22-07-2021

Locatie: Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart

In samenwerking met: Anorak

VERYTHING IS IN EVERYTHING
Outdoor Screening & Conversation (in English)
Thursday, 22 July 2021, 8.30pm
Sculpture courtyard at Württembergischer Kunstverein
Schloßplatz 2, 70173 Stuttgart
The first chapter of AFFAIRS launches with a screening of work by @wetfilm collective, followed by a conversation about contemporary forms of collectivity and artistic self-organisation between WET, anorak, and Kunstbüro of Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg.

https://anorakanorak.com/projects/affaits-chapter-1/

Laboratory Spokane

Datum: 01-11-2018 t/m 31-01-2019

Locatie: Spokane

Interactive artist in residency program in Spokane, Washington.

https://laboratoryspokane.com/

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