Good afternoon.
I am here this afternoon with a lot of questions, perhaps no answers.
There so many things to say, so many things to show. What is more important: to say or to show? And do I want to make that choice? In these 35 minutes I will show you slides from my projects
slide 1 Umea ‘Unknown Cities’
slide 2 Arnhem
and ‘Where the bus takes us
’. But first some words, something important. Issue’s which have for me open structures, not real answers inside:
It is about my point of view, my starting point, my work as an artist, with all responsibility with it. It is about Who am I?
Do my pictures needs words? What is it the meaning for my work to exhibit? Why do I do the walk as an art form? What do I want
to express? Clearly enough is that when I exhibit my works, when I share my ideas and experiences with others, is that my work
has its own identity. It has it’s own place next to me, next to my words.But why talk about art? Why give a lecture? Is the image not enough? Is the image not interesting enough? Is the image not intellectual enough? Does an image needs words to be understand? Is it because the reason is that words are so dominant, the only things we can understand with 2 senses?
The ears (to hear the words) and the eyes ( to see and read the words / to hear the words by reading them) and the 2 possibilities we have built in our body to work with these words: our hands (to write them) and our mouth (to talk the words). Is it that images containing no words are too strong to realise and to understand in such a way that we need words to discover it? Is reality to strong for visual art and do we use words as an oil to produce a method for the inbetween reality and what we are? What we can experience? How much can we take? Slide 3 Arnhem
In my latest book ‘Where
the bus takes us’,
a coproduction with Hans Eijkelboom, we did not use words at all, only a few words as an introduction how to look at the images.I am not a writer. I am a visual artists thinking and working with images. But I miss sometimes the words. Perhaps I am deep in my heart a writer, a visual writer. I think we need words. An American author told in an interview: I do not want to sell my manuscript to Hollywood. Imagine: First a person see the film and then read the book. And it is impossible to read the book without thinking of the characters in the movie. No, i do not want that. For me it is important that people read. Trying to imagine themselves. And that is very important. When you read you need the power of imagination. And that power makes people better to feel what other people feel. And that makes it that people are connecting better to each other. And that is my goal to. A better understanding. The only thing what I can do when my art it is in public and when it is needed, is to talk with people about it what they see. Or to give some words in books or magazines or in exhibition rooms or on internet. Not to explain, but to talk and to try to get more knowledge about the subjects enclosed in my works.
In Turin during my my lecture in Castello di Rivoli, I told the audience:
empty slide 4
Imagine this modern world which structures are built on the power of computers and with all the modern equipment around us like cars, trains and air planes.
But with one thing missing: The photographic image. A world unable to make photographic material. Unable to reflect and print its reality on film, paper and screen.
Imagine what it means that you can not watch TV, that there are no photographic images in papers and magazines, that you never can see a film in the cinema. Imagine your house and there are no photographic pictures on the wall. And compare this with our actual world: We can hardly understand that we are so depending on photographic images.
In such a time my life would be so different. I had to write about my experiences of walking through cities.
My mission is to explore my walks and relate them to the so called real world; the world we are living in.
My point of departure, the spot from which I view and investigate the world, is the Netherlands.
slides 5 t/m 9 of Amsterdam
, 10 t/m 14
Hardenberg, Dalfsen
The sometimes typically Dutch thing about a city and
life in that city, evidently also says something about the appearance of and the life in the city everywhere in western society . Therefore the photos
of Arnhem, Hardenberg and Amsterdam or slide 15 Rotterdam
can be combined so effortlessly with those taken in for
example slide 16 Turin
slide 17 Glasgow
slide Umea 18
slide 19 New York
. You see the difference- although you might have to look hard - but there is definitely
something in common.The commonality between the pictures from New York and other cities are not meant as a direct comparison, so is it in Amsterdam and so is it in New York. It is more about a visual definition. of what a city is and of a visual definition of the daily life in that city. I am not looking for pictures of a particular city, but of pictures of ‘cityness’. My photographic images show places, streets, buildings, people and signs that are from a specific location, but they work together as emblems for places, street images and people that you can come across anywhere in the world.
My photographic work is beautiful, for example, because there is so much to read into them. Because they pull you into the city and life. And because they get you thinking about the environment where you live daily, the streets, through which you walk and the people that you meet. Sometimes the photos make people sad because of the desolate character of a street, or the uniformity of a certain sort of clothing or behaviour. Sometimes these photos reconcile us with life through their lovely view of the city and the people that live there.
Do not think that the photos are beautiful. In any case, they are not taken with that intention. That concept or that idea is the core of my art. The photos are the visible result, but that result doesn’t have to be technically perfect and it can sometimes seem to be pronouncedly amateurish. < BR>
It seems to work like a mirror, but it is different. A mirror reflects what it sees in a very basic way. What is reflected is that which is in front of the mirror. Not more than that. A mirror stands also for escape, going away. To dream: ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful of all?’. But is also about confrontation -and inaccessible terrain. The other world, but the same. It is, it is not. Where is the image of the mirror? When it is there, where does it stand for? Is it just reflection? Or is it a surprise? A gift from another world?
My photographic material (films and photography) are also a kind of mirror. But where the real mirror’s image changes all the time, the photographic image stands there and does not change (at least for a while: except for time and human interfere). Art is a magic mirror too. It seems to work as a healing instrument that takes care for me and forbid me to lay on the beach everyday, doing nothing then eating and drinking. It eases my everyday’s fear.
My camera is my magic mirror. It is between me and the reality. it puts the reality which I see on film and that film is able to translate that reality in pictures. I can recognise what I see again through these pictures and what I can translate and improve and transform into magical moments. The images are magic, but subjective. They are magic subjective moments from reality. Urban reality in my case. A glance of very little moments of urban reality that stands for the big overwhelming standards we all have to know and influences our life, our being, our state of knowing. It is therefore my task as an artists to work with it very carefully: no jokes, no irony, no cynisme, just what it is, what it takes, what it needs. I can create a story with the things that I see around me, using them as the basis of my knowledge. Through my walks I am a kind of living machine who is picturing the environment we all live in. There will be a connection and at the same time a confrontation with the viewer him or her self and what he or she expects from the environment we all live in.
There may of course be other people who are taking photographs, perhaps at the same moment, perhaps even the same shot, but something is different. How small the difference is.
It is almost impossible to see and recognise exactly the same as I do.
Therefore when I finally choose my pictures to show to other people the images are so strange in a way. Understandable, but different. What we can see are streets and houses and other people walking etc, but in my way. Even when I am photographing all the time and make no selection, it is only a fraction of time taken away into the memory of my equipment. However there are common things, and relationships between my seeing and that of others. Recognising of course, that we all learned what a house is, or a street is, or what the meaning of environment is. What do we really understand? What do we do with it? This is partially cultural. There are so many different perceptions of reality. Only when you are born all is equal in a sense. We don't know anything at that moment. Only to look out to the world. A clean look, no language, no culture, no preconceptions when looking around. The view is clear. In my photographs and video's I try to capture around myself such a clean, clear look. It is very difficult to photograph with a clear mind.
Who am I? What is my relation to my own environment and the so called outside world? What do I see and what do I do with it? slide 20 open terrain
I am a human being far away from
home. Like Lucky Luck (the cowboy). He is always on the road and his home is a place we do not know. But he is always too busy to go home
after he finishes his job. At the same time, when Lucky Luck has an opportunity to stay, he refuses. He is afraid to stay because he feels that he will loose his independence. Lucky Luck is a very romantic figure. He does not exist. He is famous because someone wrote about him. He was discovered in someone's head. He was just walking around there and was picked up. Now is he is living in our minds. His character reminds us of "the other side". The other side is always somewhere else and hard to reach. When we are there, or when we think we are there it suddenly disappears. It is somewhere else. It is a difficult situation. Often I feel like Lucky Luck. In a way I am romantic too. I also have the desire to go to other places and when I am there, I wanne go. But that is not bad. To have the desire to the other side, the side where you want to go and what you want to experience means that you are open minded. And that is good. To have an open mind. That means freedom. Trying to imagine how the other side is. Connecting myself with others, other cultures etc. So romantic is not only dreaming away for me. It means connecting to the world.Back to one of my favourite issues: slides 21 t/m 30 of different cities
To walk through urban landscapes, the aimless roaming through the city and the translation of these walks into concepts where I presents my photos and film - not in a series, but in tableau’s, that form just such labyrinths like the cities through which I walked. Driven through my curiosity for that strange system of streets, alleys, passages, remains of the past and the banality of present day architecture.
To walk means that I go from one place to another and stay there, or go back to where I started. It is about Connectivity. I think this word does not exist. But it is here now. So it does exist. For me it means connection and activity. The willing to connect. The Mirror’s Edge exhibition is also a connector. With all the questions related to it. What happens with the work when it travels? How do people look at it in the several venues? Is it still fresh after 5 venues? Can you show the same work over and over again in the same travelling show? Or does the work(s) need changes? And I choose, because of the aspect of travelling and going to other places, to make a work in progress during the time this exhibition is travelling and even after it ~I will continue working on this project. I call this project ‘Unknown Cities’.
The Mirror’s Edge show brings me to 5 different for me unknown cities and that brought me up to make a new work about that. I show the work Williamsburgbridge slide 31 Williamsburgbridge
in this Mirror’s
Edge show and that bridge is a well known place for me. But the tour of the exhibition Mirror’s Edge brings me to cities I don’t know.
I never went to these places. Other people decide for me where to go. In my latest work ‘Where the bus takes us’ We used this idea again
in a different way. To follow a bus route. An existing route, but what is a new adventure and a lay out for new discoveries and possibilities.
But later about this Sonsbeek9 contribution.My idea is to make a work which extend the video presentation of Williamsburgbridge. This film was my first contribution to this Mirror’s Edge exhibition. I mean by that that I make a work that include the cities where the different presentations of Mirror’s edge are on display. A work with the Williamsburgbridge, Umea, Vancouver, Turin, Glasgow and Copenhagen walk video’s .
The sound is loud and also playing at the same time. The sound will change in loudness, so that for example screen 1 is the loudest, the other less etc. The attraction of the sound will change all the time, from screen to screen. The images are still playing, in depending of the changes in the loudness of the sound of each screen.
Like I told you ‘Mirror’s Edge’ started with the video ‘Williamsburgbridge’.
slides 32 t/m 36 of the Williamsburgbridge video during this story about the bridge.
This work is about my walk I made over the Williamsburgbridge at the end of the afternoon, beginning of the evening. The duration of the walk is about 50 minutes. In real time, no cuts. People are leaving Manhattan by train, car, bus, no one by foot, Only myself and my camera man. At the end of the walk, on the bridge in Brooklyn, we had to pass two man. I don’t know what they did. In the beginning during the walk in Manhattan it was light, and during the walk, crossing the water of the East River, it began to be dark. The evening started. A lot of noise of the trains and cars riding over the iron bridge. Why did I make this film? What was the reason at that moment to organise a camera, a cameraman? Why that bridge. Honestly I don’t know. I just walked that bridge at that moment, full of joy and expectations (of what?). I just wanted to cross the river, using this fine and beautiful bridge, this adventure of iron, of the past. An example of modernity; of what people can make. A highlight of people’s capacity. And at that moment I was asked to make a film. I photographed, but did not make films, some exceptions of course, but photography was my main goal. But it made me think about photography. What was not there? What is photography? What is film? What is happening when I use a video camera instead of a photo camera? What is so different? And then I discovered the movement of my body. The knowledge, the feeling of walking. The reason to walk. It has to do with my body. Filming has the capacity to inform me and others about body talk, about body language (moving, the experience of time, shaking, going) Although filming is nothing more then photo stills behind each other in time; when used it is made in ourselves to a moving reality. A kind of fake. We can not produce at this moment real moving images. It is always about how to fake the situation in such a way that we believe that it is moving, that is is real, that the time is in it. And that makes it so important in a way. Filming reflects methods in ourselves that has to do with our ability to put reality in a believable form into our state of being. And I realised that this bridge pointed me to this because a bridge connects two sides. The possibility to cross, to see, to know. The bridge was a stand alone work on exhibit in the Mirror’s Edge show in Umea, Vancouver and Turin. But already in Umea I developed the idea to make a multi video work. So I started to film in all the cities where Mirror’s Edge was on exhibit and finally in Glasgow I was able to show 4 films together, next to each other, the films Williamsburgbridge, Umea, Vancouver and Turin. And here in Copenhagen there will be added one more film: Glasgow. Here you see some slides from:Umea.
slides 37 t/m 41 from Umea
In this film you see 2 walks. One is crossing 2 bridges and the other is a walk through the centre. There was some snow, so the sound of my footsteps
is crispy.slide 42 from Vancouver video
Sorry for this bad impression. This is
the only slide at this moment. This is all about riding in a car through Vancouver.slides 43 t/m 47 from Turin
This is a big walk between my hotel in the centre of Turin to the Castello di Rivoli. a 6 hour walk made into 50 minutes. Mostly used moving
film still. So sometimes walking while running the camera. More often standing still and shooting film.slides 48 t/m 52 from Glasgow
Several days of filming around, while walking, sitting in a car, sitting in a taxi, telling the cab driver to drive around.All my work is in a sense related to each other. A cinematic framework; a series of images that refer to urban planning and complexity. My work can best be seen as a large work in progress. Each and every image is part of a single continuous report. My work including in the Mirror’s Edge show is also connecting. Connecting places. Here look at this images:
53 Turin
, 54 Glasgow
, 55 San Diego
,56 Manhattan
, 57 East Orange
, all strange places
(for me). I don’t live there. They are far away. No? You say NO? Is it perhaps your country, your city, your neighbourhood, your street, is it even your house on that picture? So that means it is not far away! My house is far away for you! You are right. It is not far. It is the same. We are equal Far away is in our head. For everybody the place where they are and live is the middle of the earth. And the rest of the world is far away. For me Europe and especially Amsterdam is the middle of the world and other place are (far) away. And that is not correct. In Umea, Sweden, they say we are the middle and they are not right either. Everybody is sitting in the middle of their own universe. Geographically speaking, the middle is what the atlas tells us. And of course, the atlas represents an agreement made by officials and world leaders. Such agreements allow us to have common standards. For example, we all agree on international time zones. These notions of agreement exist outside of ourselves, and they influence us and we are shaped by them. We don't have control over such things. Should the government decide to make a major change, for example to change Tuesday into Wednesday, we would have to follow that. If we did not we would have some problems. We are dependent upon these decisions to give shape and structure to our lives.We obey rules and agreements that form the complex structure of society. Even when you have a free mind you still have to follow those rules in one way or another But one thing belongs to ourselves: the middle. We are just the middle of the world, the universe. I went to Sweden in November 1999 and felt that was a kind of far away: almost the arctic circle! But for the people living there Amsterdam is far away. What a big deal. The world is one big network of middle points of unknown places.
And even in a small city you have these elements. One of the projects I lately worked on is ‘Where the bus takes us’. slide 58 bus project
A collaboration between myself and Hans Eijkelboom for the international
exhibition ‘Sonsbeek9’, curated by Jan Hoet. Jan Hoet brought 75 artists together for this exhibition in Arnhem (The Netherlands) and came up
with the idea to locate this -mainly outdoor- exhibition in 3 parts of the city: 1. Sonsbeekpark (as cultural and for respect of all past Sonsbeek
exhibitions) 2. The Eusebiuskerk (as the historical aspect) and 3. Shopping centre Kronenburg (socio- economical aspect and the future). In this way
Jan Hoet connects 3 important issues of this city and asked the artists to make in total freedom work for one or more of these places. Locus / Focus.
Focus on the location. The place. The first thing we did, without reading any text or ideas of Jan Hoet, was climbing on the Belvedere tower in
Sonsbeek park in Arnhem to oversee the city and in the distance we discovered the shopping centre Kronenburg (over the river in South Arnhem).
And we discussed the possibilities of connecting the tower with Kronenburg. With this idea in our head we finally got the idea to connect through
a bus line and came up with Bus line 20, which connects also the 3 venues of this Sonsbeek exhibition. The basic idea was there. What Now? What to
do with it? What to photograph and why? or maybe filming? We just started to walk. No NO, we first made a very enjoyable bus tour with line 20 and
looked and looked. And in the weeks after that we started to photograph. Just the way we walked and talked we made our photographs. Without any reason.
Just walking, looking, picturing. And by doing this and seeing it, and to talk about it we asked ourselves why? What do we want to express? What do we
want to search? And we discovered the beautiful arrangements and the complexity and connectivity between individual human behaviour and signs of
planning. Sometimes it seems as though we artists are just walking along with a dreamy stare, while ‘real’ life simply passes by. We drape it in an ingenious sauce, but that’s about it..... No, the whole line 20 project is actually about that deeper insight, that understanding. We want to know more.
With all this visual information we finally made the book ‘Where the bus takes us’. as part of the Sonsbeek 9 exhibition. Next to this book we glued series of small photographs on the windows in the 7 buses of this number 20 line + a small booklet introducing our project to the public.
The number 20 bus has the longest route in Arnhem, with 69 stops each way. The route was planned with the aim of connecting as many districts as possible, and it takes in amenities like shopping centres, homes for the elderly, and hospitals. We got out at all 69 stops, looked at the surroundings and took photographs. In doing this we focused our attention on two things: The gives facts of the environment like the spatial planning and the architecture, and alongside this everything that has come about through personal intervention. The reason for this was that in our experience the fleeting encounters made during a bus journey can give the impression that everything is the same, yet when one gets off, each place turns out to have an individuality brought about by an interweaving of town planning and individual behaviour. The next slides will give you some ideas of the whole project. Arnhem is a town with around 140000 inhabitants. The river The Rhine divides the city in 2 parts: North and South. The first slides is a series in North, the second made in South.
series slides 59 t/m 66 Arnhem North
series slides 67 t/m 74 Arnhem South
I did show you a lot of images, images of urban landscapes. Landscapes where we feel natural, instead of the real nature, where we feel fear. I did tell you a lot, a lot of words. Words we can use to think about, to get questions, perhaps to get some answers. And it was all about our reality and the importance to connect to it and to understand. SEE AND THINK! I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you very much end of lecture
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