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Boolean Works is a framework for the art and theory of Johannes Bongers.Boolean Logic was developed by 19th-century mathematician George Boole, and is widely credited as the foundation of the information age and modern digital technology. However, Boolean Logic shares the similar internal structure with capitalism. In- and exclusion and emphasising being over becoming leads to a decrease in diversity, semiotic richness, and increasing sameness and conflict.Since 1991, Boolean Works has appropriated the Boolean logical operators AND, OR, and NOT to expand the applications of Boolean Logic to counter binaries, homogeneity and the obsession with identity. The three ecologies of Felix Guattari (mind, social, and milieu) have been a great source of inspiration for this work, as have George Simondon's individuation and Heidegger's concept of technology.Over time, Boolean Works has evolved into a neo-Boolean ecological practice. This practice is manifold, with a focus on how the organism and its environment are interconnected, on mass media and the psyche and on the coherence, rather than separation, between the ecology of mind, the social, and the milieu. AND OR NOT has grown into a three-worded poem.Bongers' work spans a range of scales, depths, and perspectives, and includes sculpture, mixed media installations, text works, diagrams, video, spatial narratives, exhibition and curatorial programs, technology startups, and political entities. Boolean Works also encompasses gardens and a yellow cosmology as a way to subvert capitalism. And in Bongers' work death is always near.Recent works and projects link to websites or extra info.

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Boolean Works is het framework voor de kunst en theorie van Johannes Bongers sinds 1991.De conceptuele kunstenaar Johannes Bongers bouwt sinds 2010 aan een kosmologie. Het begon met de kleur geel, waarmee het kapitalisme wordt uitgedaagd dit toe te eigenen, zoals het met alle verschil doet. De kleur werd uitgebreid met instanties en organisaties die ten doel hebben menselijk handelingsvermogen te reactiveren. Dat zijn nu een gemeente, een stad, een bos, een tuin, een kunstcollectie afkomstig uit één plant, een politieke partij en een nieuw concept voor mens en dier. En sinds 2023 een nieuw concept voor technologie: Tech Not Logy.Na goudsmid en juwelenmonteur en na een carrière met museale solotentoonstellingen en opdrachten begon beeldhouwer Bongers zijn weg door de dimensies en verschillende schalen van het leven. Eerst als curator en daarna in de technologie, hij was 15 jaar creatief directeur in technologiebedrijven en bouwde expertise op rond informatietheorie. Zijn aanpak groeide uit in de richting van het leven zelf, de vraagstukken van de mens, de maatschappij en het milieu, post-humanisme en de betekenis van technologie.De vraagstukken van mens, maatschappij en milieu en de samenhang daartussen, hij noemt deze 'de drie ecologieën naar Félix Guattari, zijn vooreerst kennisvraagstukken. Er is een crisis die alle bestaande crises overstijgt waarin de mens een misbegrip heeft over wie en wat die is, wat de relatie is tot de leefomgeving en wat technologie daarin betekent. Bongers is door de jaren heen filosoof geworden en heeft zijn intuïties getoetst aan een breed spectrum van denkers. Wat aanvankelijk onsamenhangend leek valt langzaam op hun plaats, er ontstaan patronen en verband en nieuwe concepten.Het afnemende menselijk handelingsvermogen, de verschuiving van het publieke in het private, het wordende karakter van technologie ontmoet de wordende mens, en identiteit als voertuig voor het laatkapitalisme, een valstrik als je erin gaat geloven; dat zijn de grote vraagstukken waarmee Bongers zich inlaat. Zijn zoektocht naar een nieuwe samenhang en dwarsverbondenheid tussen de menselijke geest, het sociale en milieu is zijn dagelijks werk waarin de belangrijkste uitdaging eruit bestaat de scheiding tussen organisme en leefwereld op te heffen. Van alle organismen kent alleen de mens die scheiding, met alle gevolgen van dien. Het is een vraagstuk van topologie en afsluiting dat in de kern een beeldhouwkundig vraagstuk is: een existentieel sculpturaal vraagstuk.De conceptuele kunst en de concepten die hij als kunstenaar, creatief directeur en nu in zijn artistieke politiek uitwerkt zijn consistent. Hij bestudeert het allerkleinste als de manifestatie van een achterliggende structuur. Een voorval, de vorm van een camerabeweging, een element in een stadswapen, het wegvallen van een zin, een streepje in een woord of een rabarberplant – vormen de groeikern voor een groter verhaal. Zijn aanpak is een pleidooi voor het uitbreiden van het kunstbegrip, het buiten de grenzen treden van kunst en kunstenaars, de regie pakken op de vraagstukken die veel te belangrijk zijn om ze aan politiek over te laten. Bongers' aanpak is een pleidooi om het denken als materieel te beschouwen, voortdurend heen en terug en doorbouwen.De werken vanaf 2019 vormen één structuur die zich uitbreidt. De Gemeente Nieuwe IJssel waarin oefenen centraal staat, de stad ANDSTERDAM als wordende stad in plaats van het 'zijnde' gericht (I am sterdam), SOOOS de linkse politieke partij met een driedubbele SOS, het verdwenen Bosje van Bannink en Per-soon waarin levende wezens door-klank zijn en door stem en klank politiek worden verbonden. En een nieuw technologie paradigma Tech Not Logie waarin kunst en Techne dezelfde oorsprong hebben.Deze werken roepen op er aan deel te nemen, bij te dragen, ze zijn veelal open source, met oefeningen, voorbeelden en zelfs een politiek programma.

• Contact and websites

SOOOS is a post-political concept for a left movement that focuses on the coherence between the mind, social environment, and natural environment (The three ecologies). The name SOOOS is derived from the three S.O.S. calls for help, representing the need for action in these three areas. More information can be found on SOOOS.ORG.

DENKMAL, PUBLIC ART GIFT TO THE COMMUNITY OF GENDRINGEN, BRONZE, 2022. VISIT DENKMAL

ANDSTERDAM, THE IDENTITY OF 'BECOMING' FOR THE 750 ANNIVERSARY OF AMSTERDAM IN 2025. ANDSTERDAM

MY DREAM, YOUR FUTURE (BOOLEAN WORKS MARCH 2022)

MED-USA is a sculpture after Le Radeau de la Méduse (1819). The POV of the sculpture is the Ship of Hope on the horizon in the painting.

Newspaper article November 20, 2021 in NRC

Bosje van Bannink demolished, 2019-2022.
1000+ images of this tiny forest. Bosje van Bannink

The Family is a collection of 300 (and growing) gold and platinum leaves that are as thin as paper, all from a single rhubarb mother plant that is approximately the same age as the artist. The rhubarb leaf is a "pattern that connects," referencing to the famous Gregory Bateson line: its five-fingered shape is connected to the human hand.Gold and platinum are created in the collisions of neutron stars. When two neutron stars collide, they create a massive explosion known as a kilonova. The intense heat and pressure of the collision can fuse atomic nuclei together, forming new heavy elements like gold and platinum. These elements are then scattered into space, where they can eventually become part of new stars, planets and rhubarb leaves. In contrast to the metals, the rhubarb mother plant is located at one single spot in our universe, grows regularly each year, and its leaves are collected and prepared at a specific point in time. In 'The Family' spacetime vectors cross in a perpetual process of individuation.

Right in front of a primary school, a small meadow with three apple trees is transformed into a garden that celebrates the coherence between the three ecologies: the mind, the social and the milieu.

Artistic political intervention: The hacking of the Socialist Co-Party program of December 6, 2021 LINK to the program. This work precedes SOOOS, a new ecological political party from 2022.

Malus Domestica (Schone van Boskoop) apples are conserved in paper of De Witte Raaf, edition September 2021.

CHANGING THE MODES OF SUBJECTIVITY, THE SOCIAL AND MILIEU: ANDSTERDAM (BW 9/2022)

THE CLASH OF BECOMING: BETWEEN HUMAN SURPLUS VALUE AND THE NATURE OF TECHNOLOGY

NOT (Fettecke, 1982 AND Fountain, 1917) is created by the mother of the artist in his 'yellow' project that challenge capitalism to capture everything yellow as difference. Yellow lacks the not yet captured yellow phenomena, as capitalism produces lacks that cannot be fulfilled."Fettecke" is a five kilo butter corner piece sculpture by Joseph Beuys. "Fountain" is a famous readymade artwork by Duchamp, which consists of a urinal turned on its side and signed with the pseudonym "R. Mutt." Both "Fettecke" and "Fountain" are considered to be significant artworks because they challenge the traditional notion of what constitutes art.The AND operator between the two connects what both artworks have in common. The Boolean NOT operator inverts this connection and turns it inside out.

Town Hall of Gemeente Nieuwe IJssel, Gemeente of the Three Ecologies. 2019 - today

The Trilemma+ Game, which began in 2013, is a study in dimensional relations. In 2017, information technology was added to the Trilemma, resulting in the Tetralemma. This diagram will be updated to incorporate insights gained from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other environmental crises. The Trilemma+ Game is based on the Boolean logic operations of AND, OR, and NOT.

BOOLEAN IDENTITY, diagrams of a auto-psychoanalytic practice 2012

A priori, 2012

geeL, Leeg materiaal is a long term project about conquering the capture of capitalism and the reconstruction of subjectivity. geeL, Leeg materiaal is not about color but is about the negation of capitalism. Yellow is the consumer activation color and, in Boolean terms, NOT (RED, BLUE, ORANGE, PURPLE, ANTHRACITE, GREENISH). In semiotics the color yellow is an open or empty signifier, an empty meaning. geeL, Leeg materiaal isolates this emptiness and inflates it.

The Marriage from Hell between Nation State, Capitalism and Hard Technology (2014)

Proto is a Boolean Park exclave for dimensional prototyping

Thanks to Sean Carroll for basic scheme complexity and entropy

2005. STIP is a diagram for dimensional concepting in a technological environment. The STIP, PITS, TIPS dimensions form a tetrahedron where every node is directly connected to the other three. The non-hierarchical structure of the tetrahedron makes STIP an extremely powerful design tool. Presented at EGOS, Vienna 2007.

Critique on mass media has always been conspicuous and was belittled by Marshall McLuhan: a book is also a mass medium. To the notions of Post Media, Post Mass Media and 'Digital as Post Media' in art theory and critical theory, BW adds a fourth category that dominates all previous ones: Social Mass Media. The amount of communication it produces is the real problem, the destructive force.

STEM connects The Three Ecologies of Guattari with Techné (or Heidegger's Gestell).

Diagrams move between the real, the symbolic and the imaginary. Bongers uses diagrams to structure his thoughts and concepts.

Boolean Light collection @ Ligetti.com 1993-2021. The Boolean AND OR NOT steer the various polarising materials.

In the background of STOA (Power Plant), hidden behind an industrial facade, transformers are buzzing; generating mental, social and artistic energy to conquer entropy and homogenisation.

Ensemble of a Dutch axe, a piece of Hedera root, a nomadic/Turkana spear, a German wooden demo rifle (WO1) and a Yellow Entropic Tube.

ARTIST IMPRESSION 2020. DENKMAL IS A PUBLIC ART GIFT TO THE COMMUNITY OF GENDRINGEN 2020. LINK TO PDF

DENKMAL, 2022, BRONZE

CONCEPTUAL DIAGRAM OF PER-SON AND PER-SONATURE 2020

Mind AND Nature, Gregory Bateson 1979. He first suggested an other booktitle: The Pattern that connects

Ips Typographus is a biosemiotic copywriter. Ips Typographus (Per-son) performs in GROND# 2. GROND program 2021-2022

SON IS SOUND. For Joseph Beuys, sound was as important a sculptural material as fat, felt, or copper. He was certain that you hear a sculpture before you see it.

PER-SON performing in GROND #0

Yellow-ness as Firstness: “An instance of that kind of consciousness which involves no analysis, comparison or any process whatsoever… it has its own quality which consists of nothing else”. Charles Sanders Peirce, 1931

NOT (Orphee), clip from MOORD, 1993 Centraal Museum Utrecht. Originally cinematic material is transferred to 'limits of glass' by the 1993 video monitor and in 2021 computer screen or mobile. The longer Orphee is banging on the 'division' between life and death, the more the act is gaining relevance in times of Social Mass Media.

Closing curtains 2011. Architecture, original sound, death, montage. I filmed what i hoped was going to happen.

Clip of Beeldbeschrijving/Explosion of a Memory Heiner Müller, in CSHO #6 't Luie End. The landscape beyond life described from death. 2 channel theatre-video. Concept and played by Gerardjan Rijnders.

NOT (Lady Lazarus/Zimmer der Dame) is a 5-channel 3D video that has been compressed into one demo. The videos in Boolean Works explore the stretching of spacetime, the dominance of the camera, the relationship between sound and image, and the use of montage. The sound in this video is the reversed track "Duinpad" by Richard Bolhuis.

Overlijdensbericht/Obituary (After H. Müller) is a public text installation that reenacts a physical exhibition of Bongers' work. The phrase "I may be Japanese" is deconstructed and projected onto the deconstructed pavilion of Bernard Tschumi.

Exhibition concept of Bongers with Paul Groot, Beyer, Driessens & Verstappen e.a.

Beeldbeschrijving is a collaborative text piece created for the opening show of TENT, Rotterdam. The original play by Heiner Müller, also called Beeldbeschrijving, depicts a landscape on the other side of life and includes passages that were written using automatic writing.

TRUE SELF, FALSE SELF is part of a 10 piece museum installation. TRUE SELF, FALSE SELF is referring to Boolean Logic resulting in TRUE/FALSE, 0 or 1.

Gaze of Orpheus is a 2-channel video installation and glass rooms. The mimetic process of the two videos – each a 15-minute museum walk-through, with one camera moving forward and one moving backwards – is similar to the concept of the "Gaze of Orpheus" where life and death swap by looking back and forth.

WHALE (1991, glass, steel wire)

Details tba

Details tba

Psychotic Object # I MAY BE JAPANESE

Boolean Fruit is an exhibition plan and curatorial experiment created for De Appel, Amsterdam. Bongers used Boolean logic to create the exhibition architecture of Boolean Fruit. The principles of AND, OR, and NOT were applied to the "Route Architecturale" drawn for the two protagonists: Logos and Phonos. These two concepts are in conflict, each struggling for dominance in our minds and culture.

City counsil of ANDSTERDAM

Boolean Park is a studio that focuses on information and human interaction in technological environments. Its clients include companies in the travel industry (XITIES) and the cultural sector (KCO, North Sea Jazz, Holland Festival, and Mens + Boek).

Harald Szeemann, the renowned curator, has been a great inspiration for Bongers' way of dealing with art and context.

YELLOW CONTRA MATERIAL WORKSHOP

'Het levende levenloze wezen' is part of I May Be Japanese, 1995, Gallery Sluijmer & Van Leeuwen, mixed media installation

MODEL FOR CHANGE (BATESON, WEICK AND VAN STAVEREN) 2021

LE BANQUET CÉLESTE

EARLY PIECE OF OBJECT ORIENTED ONTOLOGY

EARLY PIECE OF OBJECT ORIENTED ONTOLOGY

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Case Study House Omega was based on an Omega shaped camera movement in Profession Reporter of Michelangelo Antonioni. The projects of CSHO mark the stages and montage of this moviescene: interior/secret, body, camera, gaze, window, psyche, identity, landscape, psychosis and death (Omega). 100+ artists, architects and authors participated.

GREEN 1.01 & GREEN 2.0, Case Study House Omega #5, Our first project about The Three Ecologies,1997

BONZAI AND ARTIFICIAL TREES + VIDEOS OF HANDWRITING THE THEATREPLAY BILDBESCHREIBUNG OF HEINER MÜLLER

First leaf as per-son of Boolean Family. Multiple with spacetime stamp

The Three Sisters. A Public Art Space Template at GROND 2020

Recommended herbicides by Wageningen University NL for effective crop control

FIRST SOLO 1991. Private portraits standing and sleeping. Inspired by The Poetics of Space of Gaston Bachelard and Oponthoud van de dood van Maurice Blanchot.

GROND PROGRAM 2021/2022

BOOLEAN BARS #7, # 13, 2019

Bongers first calligraphy/letter writing at the age of 17.