Exquisite Errors: ECCO-I

Does someone who diverges from the norm have a mental disorder? Or can being different give you special skills and talents? Ten years ago visual artist Barry van der Rijt was diagnosed with ADHD. Exquisite Errors shows that his ‘disorder’ can yield a fascinating project.

Van der Rijt became fascinated by surprising glitches which can occur in digital movie playback. In a timespan of two years he created, obsessively, hundreds of such erroneous images, so called codec errors. By making deliberate distortions in the playback of digital film a series of beautiful ‘deviations’ arose.

In Exquisite Errors he categorized these ‘disorders’, inspired by the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This manual defines more than three hundred mental disorders and prescribes how to diagnose these. The big difference with the DSM however is that all ‘disorders’ are labeled not negatively but positively.

Barry van der Rijt makes a powerful statement with his work and puts our view on disorders in a new perspective. He not only embraces the beauty of the ‘disorder’ but also points out its importance.

About the card set
This set of postcards contains an selection of 18 works by Van der Rijt, systematically categorized into typologies.

About Barry van der Rijt
Barry van der Rijt (1974, Nijmegen) is a Dutch visual artist and experimental filmmaker. He likes to play with film related matter: videotapes, codecs, pixels, screens. With the results of these experiments he creates new meanings, usually resulting in short films. His work was screened on Dutch national television, in musea, at several international festivals in Europe, and at exhibitions outside Europe.

Other books by Barry van der Rijt