For Delia Derbyshire Day 2025…

AN INTERVIEW WITH MADELON HOOYKAAS

ABOUT RE-DISCOVERED FILM ‘DAYDREAMS’

2025 volunteer Marla Broadway posed ten questions to the visual artist and filmmaker Madelon Hooykaas.  This presented a rare opportunity for us to find out a bit about what it was like working with Delia firsthand. But as well as looking back, it offers a chance for Madelon to reflect on the charity established in Delia’s legacy, and how its values of ‘Creativity, Curiosity, Collaboration and Openness’ are different for artists in the present day.

The context for this interview: Video art pioneer Madelon Hooykaas got in touch with us to tell us about an exciting re-discovery: ‘Daydreams’, a short art film that Madelon and Elsa Stansfield made in 1972 with a soundtrack by Delia. At this year’s Manchester event, we screened ‘Daydreams’ where a feeling of “slowly waking up” is captured. The soundtrack, features a slow, dissonant yet playful piano improvisation based on a popular nursery rhyme. A tender electronic motif appears fleetingly, as the voiceover ponders the tension between the ordinary, mundane pattern of daily life and the final rupture of death. The film was produced as a pilot for One of These Days, enabling Stansfield and Hooykaas to demonstrate their eligibility for the funding. This film is not available online.

1. Can you give us an introduction to yourself as an artist and some of your work?

The best introduction is to look at my website www.madelonhooykaas.net or  my wikipedia page. I am a visual artist and photographer based in Amsterdam. I started as a photographer and learned on the way, living in Paris, London, Brussels and New York before I started to collaborate with the Scottish artist Elsa Stansfield on film projects in 1972. We worked from 1975 on video environments and sound sculptures in many countries around the world like Canada, USA, Great Britain and Japan. Our collaboration ended by the early death of Elsa in 2004.

2. What and who were your earliest passions and influences?

I am very interested in Zen Buddhism and living in different countries to meet other artists.

3. When did you first hear of Delia Derbyshire?

Through the Scottish artist Elsa Stansfield, who worked in collaboration on the soundtrack with Delia for the film ‘Circle of Light’.

4. What inspires you about her work?

Her joyfulness.

5. Could you describe, in a few words, the relationship between music and video art in the work ‘Daydreams’?

‘Daydreams‘ was a pilot film being made to be able to find the finance for a 30 minute film, ‘One of these days.’ At that time (1972) there was not yet any video art. But in the film ‘Daydreams’ the music feels like you are slowly waking up.

6. What’s your most memorable interaction from your collaboration with Delia?

Playing darts in the pub in Gilsland and drinking Guinness.

7. What’s one thing you’d like the attendees of DD Day 2025 take away from the showing of this film?

To have a feeling of ‘waking up’ through experiencing a short experimental film.

8. The newly established core values of Delia Derbyshire Day are Creativity, Curiosity, Collaboration and Openness. Which one resonates with you the most, and why?

I think I like the 3 C’s. As a visual artist I started already in 1975 to collaborate with Elsa Stansfield. Collaboration between artists was very rare in those days and was not understood.

9. Are there any other underrepresented artists you’ve worked with over the years, similar to Delia, who you think deserve the attention of our audience?

The other composers I worked with are all very well known by now.

10. Things have changed a lot over your lifetime. Has this influenced any of your current work, and would you like to share any upcoming projects?

I started with analogue photography and then work with Polaroid sequences. In 1972 I started to collaborate with the Scottish artist Elsa Stansfield in London and later in Amsterdam making several 16mm films. Then in 1975 we started to make video environments combine black & white video and photographs. Since then I worked with 15 different video formats ending with digital moving images. Nowadays every one makes photos and videos.

Coming up for Madelon Hooykaas:

Organized by IMAI in Dusseldorf ‘When the World went out of Tune with itself’

• In this project several of the early films by Hooykaas/Stansfield with a soundtrack by Delia are being shown. A brochure in English will be published. I will be there for the panel discussion and the premiere of my recent video ‘Ecology of the body’ will be shown.

Exhibition: When the world went out of tune with itself, at Forum Freies Theater Düsseldorf part of Approximation Festival, Düsseldorf (DE)

• When the world went out of tune with itself (freely adapted from Delia Derbyshire, “Als die Welt aus dem Takt geriet“ in German) at Forum Freies Theater Düsseldorf part of Approximation Festival with several films and videos by Hooykaas/Stansfield and Madelon Hooykaas and a panel discussion organized by Intermedia Media Art Institute, Düsseldorf, (DE) 27-29th of November 2025.

Group exhibition: Still Glasgow, at Gallery of Modern Art Glasgow, Scotland (UK)

• Still Glasgow, a group exhibition with work by photographers such as Bert Hardy, Oscar Marzaroli, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Patricia MacDonald, David Eustace and Joseph McKenzie are shown alongside works by artists Stansfield/Hooykaas, Matthew Arthur Williams, Roderick Buchanan and Iseult Timmermans.Running from 29th November 2025 till April 2027.

HAPPY DELIA DERBYSHIRE DAY 2025!

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