Umbilical Planes
How do roads guide us, and how do they close us off? Which lives and stories do they enable, and which are eliminated? Fifty years after Groningen-born artist Bas Jan Ader vanished at sea, ARTisBOOK presents Umbilical Planes by Karin Iturralde Nurnberg: website situated in the cabin of an airplane. The work expands on the project 11 Hours of Clouds, parts of which were on show at ARTisBOOK in February 2025. In this compilation of associative and fragmented stories and essays presented as a website, installation and an accompanying performance, Iturralde Nurnberg explores the queer phenomenology of the liminal spaces of travel and being underway.



During the show I also performed 6 times in the weekend before the closing of the show. The performance consisted of 2 moments of spoken word. 

The first one was a text which is the monologue of an airplane pilot from the cockpit. The text was accompanied by Art is Book’s neighbor Harry, who gently played the drums. 


In the second part of the performance, I exit the exhibition space and invite the audience (with a maximum capacity of four people) to follow me into a car. Inside the car is my friend Camila Facco, who serves as the driver.

Once the audience is seated, I close all the car doors and initiate a phone call via Bluetooth. The driver answers, and my voice is broadcast through the car’s speakers. I continue the narration through this phone call while walking alongside the moving vehicle.

When the car inevitably accelerates faster than I can walk or run, it leaves my body behind and merges onto the surrounding landscape and traffic. From that moment on, my presence in the performance splits in two, leaving my body behind and while my voice narration keeps being carried by the speakers inside the car.



This work has been shown in:

1. Umbilical Planes
19.9.2025 — 19.10.2025
curated by Pieter Augustijn and Ruby de Vos
As part of Fall: Five Fails
Art is Book
Groningen, NL
photos by: Jedidja Smalbil , Marinus Augustijn and Pieter Augustijn

Made possible by Mondriaan Fonds, Kunstraad Groningen, and Cultuurfonds.