Tools (v004)

Glb, 18 MB, 3d lidar scan, Alexandra Crouwers, 2025

'Tools (v004)’ is a digital, interactive sculpture: a 3D scan of an assembly of objects in my studio, including a fragment of a mammoth bone, an iphone with a broken screen, a neolithic stone tool, yarn and needles, and cables. They are tied together with blue cloth-covered electrical wire, merging into one digital artefact.

'Tools’ is an ongoing set of works that empathically visualise the continuity of human existence across time and space. It is a way for me to emphasise and participate in 'the history of things': reuniting ideas and objects across artefacts, works of art, tools and expressions that form a "visible portrait of the collective identity” – in the words of art historian George Kubler ('The Shape of Time', 1962). 'Tools (v004)' extends this identity to include the non-human.

Alexandra Crouwers (b. 1974, NL) is a visual artist and artistic researcher. Her work explores the expanding possibilities of digital technologies as a means to formulate responses to global ecosystemic crises and to (re)establish connections between our species and non-human entities. At the heart of her practice are speculative narratives that feed experimental short (3D animated) films, but her works also include woven tapestries, artistic information panels, audio works, emoji proposals and performative lectures. Crouwers' works have been exhibited at Museum M (Leuven, BE), Technische Sammlungen (Dresden, DE), Museum Ludwig (Budapest, HU) and SMAK Museum ( Ghent, BE). Film screenings include Transmediale (Berlin, DE), Impakt (Utrecht, NL), Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK), Uppsala Short Film Festival (SE) and Portable Film Festival (Sydney/Melbourne, AUS). She lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.

www.alexandracrouwers.com / @acrwrs / @alexa_crwrs