Floris Kaayk
The Hague, The Netherlands
Floris Kaayk (born in 1982) is a Dutch digital artist. Kaayk graduated from the animation department of AKV St. Joost School of Fine Art and Design in Breda, and gained a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. His work focuses on futuristic concepts and fantasies, and visualises technological progress, demonstrating both its advantages and disadvantages.
Kaayk first became known to a wider audience with his fictional ‘semi-documentaries’ The Order Electrus and Metalosis Maligna. In 2011 Kaayk made headlines with a number of social media videos posted on the weblog of his alter ego, Jarno Smeets, who claimed to be the first human able to ‘fly like a bird’. The following year he revealed it as fiction and part of his art practice. In 2014, he won the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize for his animated films and semi-documentaries. His video for the song Witch Doctor (2016) by Dutch alternative rock band De Staat received numerous prizes, including a UK Music Video Award, an Edison Pop Award, a European Music Video Award and was declared Best Dutch Videoclip Ever in 2019. In 2016, The Modular Body won a Golden Calf Award at the Netherlands Film Festival in the ‘Best Interactive Work’ category. In 2012 Kaayk was named ‘Creative City’ ambassador by the City of The Hague, and in 2016 he was appointed Fellow of HKU University of the Arts Utrecht and Fellow of Next Nature Network.