The name BLOB is inspired by the blob fish: an underwater creature that lacks structure and form above the water and only gains substance and sustenance through the pressure of the environment in the depths of the ocean. In our practice, we foreground the conditions within which our practices can take place and constantly seek new ways in which (sometimes seemingly limiting) circumstances can be artistically generative. The alleged “ugliness” of the blob fish refers to a non-confirming attitude when it comes to aesthetic norms. BLOB is a caring and restorative art practice with humoristic and absurdist edge. BLOB interventions take shape in fluxus-like performances, gatherings, installations/spaces, exercises and small publications. 

Artistic careers are more often than not rather messy and nonlinear. In order to uphold an artistic practice, one often has to perform paid and/or unpaid labour that allows for the conditions in which a routinized art practice can be maintained. Caregiving responsibilities may interrupt a disciplined work hygiene as well as attitudes often seen as vital in artistic practices, such as will power, tenacity, wanderlust, and accepting precarious working and living conditions. Not only are these forms of artistic embodied labour over-romanticized (Scholtes 2024), they may be at odds with other forms of labour that are part and parcel of an art worker’s daily life. The professional art world — i.e., residencies, funding, etc. — often foregrounds either the work of young artists or the work of those who have had a consistent artistic career. BLOB aims to make these discrepancies visible and to show that (e.g., parental) care work and an artistic practice, are not mutually exclusive, but can leak into and feed each other. In our daily practice of “parenthood”, the pressures and demands echo those of artistic processes. Both can be spaces of vulnerability, uncertainty, and relentless dedication. Many of our artistic practices unfolded not in an art studio, but in the confines of our homes, shaped by the rhythms of children’s sleep and the spaces of their nurture. This shift from a workspace to one interwoven with the acts of caregiving, challenges the norms of artistic production and invites an exploration of what it means to create. Building on others who foreground art as a form of care and caring as a way of knowing (e.g., Care Ecologies Group 2022 or Ostendorf-Rodríguez 2023) BLOB creates work around these topics, while critically examining and expanding the definitions of artistic spaces, processes, and values. This approach also invites a reevaluation of the vulnerability and ‘not knowing’ inherent in both art and parenthood or other forms of care. By acknowledging and integrating the flux and the minutiae of parental life into the fabric of artistic practice, we propose a model of art that reflects the actual conditions of its making; in which the intertwining of life’s duties with artistic creation is seen not as a limitation, but as a rich, generative ground for innovation and expression. BLOB challenges the “art world” by exploring how its frameworks can be more inclusive to diverse life experiences, such as parenthood, which profoundly shape the artistic perspective and output.

Conceptually, BLOB challenges the view of the human body as a (closed) whole. Instead, it posits the body as permeable and interconnected with its environment, highlighting the fluidity between one body and other lifeforms. This approach encourages a reevaluation of individuality, suggesting that some kind of “self” is not contained within physical boundaries but extends outward, mingling with the world around us. Inspired by the essay “The Second Body” by Daisy Hildyard (2017) we propose a body that is never whole, never one (Mol 2002), but leaky (Shildrick 2015) and porous. How can the idea of blobbing illuminate the intricate interconnections between human existence and the natural world? This concept seeks to dissolve the perceived separations between human and environment, emphasizing our integral role within larger systems. We explore and develop ways of knowing in which bodies are porous and leaky, both thematically (through projects like “The Leaky Bodies Archives” [2024/2025] or “Butoh Notes: daily imagery for porous sensitivities” [2025]), methodologically (see the next section) and somatically (see the section on BLOBBING AS BODY WORK). 

In our work, “blobbing” is also fostered as artistic research method that embodies the principles of leaky bodies. It is a practice of cultivating sensitivities that we deem essential for artistic labour, dissolving the barriers between bodies, and engaging in a form of exploration that transcends conventional understanding of methodology. “Blobbing” as method encourages artistic researchers and research participants alike to embrace vulnerability, permeability and porosity, by cultivating practices of attunement (Scholtes 2022). As an artistic research method, blobbing encourages not-knowing, tentative attempts, and mistakes, and a culture of “leaking”: sharing of the process at every stage of the research, questioning individual authorship, practicing radical collaboration, situatedness and reflectivity, and by allowing care and other work to leak into and inform our methodologies (see the section on BLOBBING AS A FORM OF CARE). We foreground the necessity of practicing a strong documentation hygiene and rigorously attune our documentation practices to the specificity of the research and everybody (human and non-human) involved.  

In practice, we explore this method in two ways. As two part-time artists (who are both mothers and uphold their teaching and/or massaging practice), we want to experiment with radical collaboration. We take turns in the studio, picking up the work where the other left off. By articulating what kind of artistic processes this way of working allows for, we merge into one “blob” creature and question individual authorship, aiming for a practice that is truly collaborative and situated.

Second, we open our studio practice  for other artistic practitioners by hosting movement practices. We critically engage with the art of gathering (Priya Parker, “The Art of Gathering,” Riverhead Books, 2018) and hosting (Simon Kentgens & Florian Cramer, “Hosting as Artistic Practice,” Humdrum Press, 2023): the explorations of the conditions in which hosting a gathering is done “well” will be an important part of the experiment, as it allows us and others to experience how a “leaky” artistic practice is or can be conducted.

Body work is an integral part of BLOB as an artistic practice. We (Ulrike and Mariëlle) both have a body work background and cultivating a routinized bodily practice as part of our gatherings feels both familiar and urgent: a form of caring for our bodies as our artistic research instruments (Scholtes 2024). As makers and researchers, we practice blobbing in a movement studio as a way to cultivate fluidity, interconnectedness, and leakiness. We move, visualize, go on walks, and experiment with techniques borrowed from somatic movement, mime, Butoh, massage therapy, and haptonomy. Multiplicity is foregrounded, as we search for a variety of imaginations of the body that foster specific ways of using and moving the body and relating to specific realities. The training is more than a metaphor for artistic processes, but becomes an actual playground for practicing forms of embodied labour that are part and partial of making processes. We practice bodily skills such as receptivity, attunement, processing, incorporating, excorporating, and porosity. We open up our movement space to other practitioners, by cultivating and sharing a practice in way that is easily transmitted, hosted and guided, so that the movement practice can be sustained, without the necessity of having either of us present. In other words, blobbing is an open bodily training that we are eager to share with everyone. It takes different forms and sizes (dependent on those hosting the sessions and their resources, skills and background). At the moment, a training consists of (at least) the following components: 

- Shaking. we shake our bodies for at least 30 minutes. Shaking is used in different ways in different practices, in dance and theatre contexts and in therapy or spiritual contexts. For BLOB, it facilitates practicing moving in and out of a process. Similar to a meditation technique, practitioners notice how they drift off, are eager to quit or interrupt the process, become self-aware or doubt the purpose of their activity. By setting a time frame, we allow ourselves to observe this process of attention and dissociation and practice to acknowledge this as part of any (making) process. Meanwhile, we sweat, tremble, release, and relax our bodies. 

- From lying down to standing up in at least 10 minutes. This is another process that allows for observation. Within this process of extreme slow movement patterns, strategies, and doubts become explicit that echo the troubles of any making-process. With nothing more at stake than getting up from the floor, we create a context in which we can stay with these troubles (with a little nod to Donna Haraway) and explore them in depth and in all their specificities. This practice is inspired by Butoh body work and can be accompanied with different images or substituted by other transitions in space (e.g., from standing to lying down or walking from one side of the space to the other). 

- Nose following finger. As an exercise that is used in different practices (e.g., in theatre, Butoh, or Body Weather Training) it knows many forms and has different emphases. The reason this exercise is part of our routine, is that it facilitates the practice of collaboration, attunement, and knowing (when) to take and let go of control. Meanwhile, it allows for the joy of synchronized movement and generates laughter and absurdity: qualities we seek to celebrate and cultivate. 

We are two art practitioners who have collaborated in the past (see, for instance, the project Out of Your Mindfulness) at the intersection of somatic and artistic practice. For the past five years, we both went our individual ways. We developed a successful massage studio (Movement Matters) and a PhD at the intersection of social science and artistic research (Ulrike Scholtes). We both became parents (individually) and deal with the challenges of navigating multiple lives. We want to question conventions within the art world that foreground youth, such as residencies and funding for “young artists” — we are both in our mid-thirties — and coherent CVs. Questioning individual authorship and makership, we merge our two CVs into one, as part of the experiment that is foregrounded in this project: a leaky artistic practice that merges bodies and blurs boundaries. Without taking for granted what parenthood (or motherhood) or being an artist means, we practice with curiosity and rigor, articulating the sensitivities that our very situatedness (including its problems and challenges) develop and questioning how these sensitivities can be practiced as generous and generating artistic skills.

Viewing Blobbing as a persona invites a dialogue about identity in a fluid and interconnected world. What does it mean to adopt a Blobbing persona that neither fully identifies with humanity nor nature, but exists in the dynamic interstice? What defines a persona? What if we embrace the concept that it’s an intersection of many? Perhaps a multitude teeming with presence and absence. What can be found in the shared spaces?

Can we consider that perhaps, within the conventional confines of ‘one person,’ there could reside multiple dynamic existences, interconnected and interdependent? What does it mean to inhabit multiple bodies, to share intertwined yet distinct realities? How do these gaps, these voids that we strive to overlook, define us more accurately than the obvious, the visible? How might we dissect and reconstruct the notion of self that traditionally binds an artist to a single body? Can we, through artistic expression, explore the fluid boundaries where identities merge and dialogue begins? Where does one end and the other begin? We break with this artificial boundary, a construct of social convenience rather than a reflection of reality. In exploring these questions, we aim to create works that resonate with the complexities of human identity—fluid, overlapping, permeable. What if our artist research identity lies not within the singular, but across a spectrum of shared and individual experiences, a collective woven from the threads of somatic experiences? How might we articulate this dynamic, this constant flux of becoming and unbecoming with artistic research? By embracing the ambiguity inherent in these questions, the residency becomes a space for unfolding the multiple layers of human connection. It challenges us to think, to question, and to reimagine the essence of being in a world where boundaries are both defined and dissolved by our perceptions.