From Competition to Compassion is a film essay with a documentary inflection about the Dutch artist Louwrien Wijers (b. 1941). The film is set in Friesland, where Wijers lives and works following an international career in New York and Amsterdam. Through intimate and contemplative imagery, the film portrays an artist who developed her practice as part of Fluxus and in dialogue with influential thinkers and artists such as Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, and Lawrence Weiner. The film further lingers on what Louwrien describes as “mental sculptures”, artworks shaped through work on consciousness. Her central yet overlooked artistic practice is conveyed through a cinematic form of historiography that illuminates how conceptual art, metaphysics, and spirituality constitute a discursive and exploratory field within art history, closely connected to technological and societal development.

Wijers' most extensive work, the international conference Art Meets Science and Spirituality in a Changing Economy, took place in 1990 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The conference brought together leading artists such as John Cage and Marina Abramović, scientists including David Bohm and Francisco Varela, and spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama to discuss the role of art in an evidence-based and capitalist society. It was here that Louwrien’s core thesis, “From Competition to Compassion” emerged. The film explores this thesis through interviews, archival material, and visual interpretations.

From Competition to Compassion conveys how artistic visions continue to resonate in an ageing artist who believes in a world without borders, where dialogue is a central tool through the language and power of art. Like Louwrien Wijers’ oeuvre, the film seeks to communicate the importance of art being able to be abstract and philosophical while remaining radical.

Carsten Aniksdal is an artist and filmmaker working with lens-based media and sound installations. His works have been shown at the Munch Museum, the Autumn Exhibition, Kunstrom Skogen, and Lydgalleriet, and are represented in the City of Oslo's art collection. As a cinematographer, Aniksdal has, in addition to his own artistic practice, made important contributions to the work of several Norwegian artists, many of whom have received awards and exhibited nationally and internationally. http://www.carstenaniksdal.com

Petrine Vinje is a visual artist working with sculpture and art projects in public space. Her works have been shown in solo exhibitions at institutions such as Galleri F15, Fotogalleriet, and the Museum of Cultural History. In 2024, she completed a doctoral degree in artistic research with the project Surfacing Solids, on meaning-making and enactivism in sculptural and archival investigative practice, at Oslo National Academy of the Arts. http://www.petrinevinje.com

Vinje’s background is in visual art and interdisciplinary research collaborations, with a strong interest in perception and meaning-making, while Aniksdal works primarily with lens-based media and sound to explore duration, space, and spacetime. Through the publishing company O, they collaborate on projects in which human experience and reflection are central.