1982 COELACANTH - A possible family member of this living fossil fish left the water 350 million years ago and became the ancestor of all the vertebrates on land. In this performance the quest of learning to live in a foreign environment is a metaphore for the world that an artist creates for himself. For Van Bemmel artworks are also kinds of fossils: they are the frozen witnesses of an invisible mental process. At Perfo, Rotterdam, and De Fabriek, Eindhoven and Pictura, Dordrecht
1983 ROVING ROCKS - Nobody ever saw the roving rocks move in Death Valley, Nevada, but their tracks indicate that they do. In the gallery the desert has been painted on a thick layer of plaster. When the rocks are put in locomotion ( a.o. by means of radiosteering) they produce tracks of brightly coloured pigment.The bare feet of the artist and her dog also leave traces and in this way they finish the painting in which they move around. At galerie Westersingel, Rotterdam
1984 BACK TRACK is a search back in time. Two enlightened feet move backward while objects lit up and disappear in the dark. They give us clues about the evolutionairy origins of conciousness. At Perfo, Rotterdam and Makkom, Amsterdam
1985 LOOKING FOR CLUES is a continuation of Back Track. The outer appearance of the rocks and frogs do not correspondent with their contents. The frogs are our alter ego alias enchanted princes. The Michelinman has a problem with his identity as well. At Alternativa 4, Lisboa Portugal
1986 PERSEUS' SHIELD In this performance mirrors symbolise the borderline between the visible world. and the invisible experience of it. Two classic stories in which mirrors play the key role are intertwined. Anyone who looks Medusa in the burning eyes turns into stone. By using his polished shield as a mirror Persues succeeds in cutting off Medusa's head without looking straight at her. The terrible truth c.q. death can only be dealt with in an indirect way. Alice gets lost at the other side of the mirror and in an unusual version of the croquet game - the hammers have turned into flamingo's and the balls are curled up hedgehogs that run away all the time - she is told to behead the Chesire Cat . The problem is the cat has not got a body to cut its head off from. Imagination and truth are inseparable. Shown at Edge, London, at Lokaal 01 Breda,
1987 DIOGENES is a series of performances that are not documented. The first version was excecuted on a sailing roundabout boat wrapped in black plastic.
1988 PEENEEWALLY. Behind the enchanting lightshow of this Jamaican fireflyis its lovelife is almost invisible to the human eye, because of the mimiature scale in which the drama takes place. During the performance one zooms in on tthe event. Slowly the gruesome reality becomes clear. Female Peeneewallies lure fireflies of a different kind and eat them to gain enough proteins for their eggs. But the male of her own species is hardly better off: the couple soon dies after their romantic encounter. Shown at Flaxman gallery London, and Nova Zembla Den Bosch, and Peristiel Amsterdam
1989 THE RED KINGS' DREAM. This is the last performance about the quest for the invisible realm of emotion and experience . Alice is confronted with the filosofical problem that our senses are not reliable if we want to know the truth. Therefore, we might as well be "sorts of things in the dream of God"(accordng to Berkeley). Alice dreams that the Red Chess King dreams about an encounter with her. If the king wakes up, will Alice go out like a candle? In this presentation Alice tis sleeping in front of the looking glass. Her reflection gets up and does the performance. At Villa Aquer, Cagliari Italy and Museum De Prinsenhof Delft, Netherlands
1990 THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. The conclusion after “The Red King’s Dream” is that if we don't know on which side of the mirror we are, it makes no sense to try to step through. With slides, videofragments and life scenes from the various performances the story of the quest for the invisible world is told. Shown in Newcasle, Assemini. Amersfoort, Arnhem, and Rotterdam
1997 SYNAPS (withPeter Baren) The problem of the former performances has turned around. Synapses are the very ends of our nerves. By means of chemicals they transmit messages to other nerves. That means that thoughts and ideas cannot exsist without matter. Can we say emotions are matter? Matter manifests itself in time. Or is time an illusion? A giant enlightened head slowly turns around while being covered with sand falling from above. Head shaped blicks of ice are melting.At Interazioni. Cagliari, Italy
2005 COOL WATER The philosopher Herakleitos pointed out that there is unity in contrasts. The creation exists grace to the delicate balance of opposing forces. Herakleitos illustrates this with the pronouncement: “ we cannot get into the same river twice" The water flows away, but the river stays. Parmenides is his opponent. A river of blue buckets was formed for the performance. A letter at the bottom of each bucket was taken out to form the mentioned pronouncement. During a performanceweek at Arka, Sardegna.