Unknown Cities and other projects.

LECTURE TURIN
in Castello di Rivoli
during the symposium of Mirror’s Edge
By Peter Spaans
September 30, 2000

1 empty slide, no image, during the whole introduction.

Good afternoon, 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, on tables or hide in photo albums of your family or friends or from your holiday trips or whatever. 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. Normally I walk around like a spy in modern cities. Nobody sees me.
And I project my photographic images on screen or walls in museum- and gallery spaces. Or I have my images printed in books or show it on my computer. And today I stand in front of a big audience to talk about my walks. Happily we live in a world with the capacity to make photographic material and can I show you real images instead of only talking about what I saw outside.

Slide with text: Walking is good for your feet.
5 slides of different cities, during this text, about walking.


What is walking? Let's say that to walk is a wonderful thing. You have to do it. To understand that you have to walk or at least to go with a low speed through streets of cities. There is no minimum or maximum speed.
Not everybody can walk and therefore it is understandable to use wheelchairs or bicycles or whatever else there is. When walking it is important not to know where you are going. Every street, every corner is important. All details are there! Find out a way to discover this. I am the person who walks for the experience of walking. Ordinary walking through streets without any thoughts. Just plain walking.
Sometimes however, I have to stand still to take a photograph. Sometimes however, I just walk and open the shutter of my camera, without seeing what the camera does. I know, of course, what it takes, but the angle is different, because I do not see through the camera at that moment. Other times I look through the lens and I see which photograph I am taking. It is on the film and in my head. Two different things. Or I take my video camera with me and just open the shutter and go for a walk. The movements of my body are visible because of the shaking of the camera. On screen you see the streets and buildings and whatever shaking. Sometimes it does not move, at that moment I am standing still. Or I am sitting and have put my camera next to me.


slide with text: Going by subway train.

Next to "the walk" is to travel by subway.
It is great to discover the city through the subway system. Just buy your ticket and go for a ride. Take every train you want and explore the city. There is no need to get off and see what is going on away from the subway system. Just ride around.
Imagine the city above your head and try to figure out where you are by using the map.
Feel the pleasure when the train goes up and changes from an underground into an elevated system.

4 slides from the Ironbound

See the city from a kind of distance. Streets are below you and you are able to look into houses, backyards, gardens, schools, factories and offices etc. Enjoy the view. Hear the sounds of the car and the system itself. Metal on metal, the wind, the engines, and the voices of the people on board. It is all part of the joy of the system. Normally there is an end of the system, or you decide to change for another train. Or, you go out to eat or to see the streets by yourself. What I normally do is to take several rides like this before I am ready to do "the walk". For me the subway is a kind of institution you can not miss. It is there to give you an emotional connection to the city. It is the entrance of the city's system. It belongs to and is part of the vital organs of the city.


Slide with text: Going by car is a different story.


1 slide out from the car near the border of Mexico.
There is always a kind of distance between you and the city. Like in a movie theatre. On the screen you see an image which presents a form of reality. It is moving. It is about the outside life. The same is true in a car.

3 slides out from the car on different roads.

As the car rides around the streets you are looking at the outside world. I like to drive around in the car. It provides me a quick and instantly gratifying satisfaction of my desire to be related to the city. I become one with the city. I don't feel like a stranger. It is normal to be there in that car. I love those American movies where people are driving in cars and following each other trying to catch one another.

Unknown cities and other projects / Peter Spaans / page 3

slide with text: works for Cities.

Since my first visit to Berlin and from 1982 to New York, I have concentrated on the question of "what is a city."

4 SLIDES: of NY

I walked a lot through New York City. And I asked myself: What is it’s meaning for myself and for others? What is the meaning of the city in general, and what is the meaning of the city in cultural life? What role has the city taken since it is growing so fast? In the beginning my interest was mainly tension, curiosity and interest. I made my artworks with a deep feeling from inside, which I cannot describe. In these works I noted my memories and experiences of my travels to and in Berlin and New York.
In a way, that is still what is happening. The difference now is that I am focussing not only on Berlin and New York, but also on other cities and other urban landscapes.
I use all kind of media for my work: photographs, video, books, installations etc; working alone or in collaboration with other artists.


‘WORKS OF A CITY’ (1983).
This book and this installation were one of my earliest works focusing completely on the idea of the city.

1 slide.

In the municipal museum of Arnhem, a big installation with photographs, books, bookshelf and silkscreens. This installation took part in a smaller room of the museum, between 2 bigger rooms. I made a kind of through way, with windows (big photographs) and shelf (like in a library), filled with ‘fake’ books. These books were made of carton mounted with photocopies of cities etc. Under these shelf and in between the ‘windows’ I hanged silkscreens and collages about the city.

Unknown cities and other projects / Peter Spaans / page 4

Project: The office.
The Office, which was on exhibit in Gallery De Gele Rijder, Arnhem (1984). The Office transformed the gallery space into an office.There were tables and cabinets and art hanging on the wall and
1 slide. windows with views of Manhattan streets. There were typing machines and everything further needs for an office.
1 slide. I was the director and 4 ladies were my assistants. What we did during this day was to simulate the activities of an office.
1 slide.
We were busy typing, talking etc. The assistants were typing my diaries from New York and they gave it away to the visitors. This project lasted for one day, during normal office hours. I made this office project in a serial of projects made by different invited artists who made all kind of projects about the city. For me the city is important because of its influence over our lives. And at that time it was 1984. The famous year of big brother. For me it was a simple connection. The idea is that we are pushed by structures hiding behind office walls and those offices are in streets everywhere. And that we have no secrets left, because of the all seeing eye of the big brother in the office. One of the projects I am working on now is the renewed office project (2000 - 2002) everything changed: new tables, computers and other systems for communication, photographs of the old office hanging at the wall (connection in time and space) and of course views of streets in different cities. The office is bigger now: It has a video room, 2 slide projection rooms and an exhibition room for photo projects extra. It is 18 years later. year 2002. A new millennium. I expect to exhibit this project around the year 2002.

Between 1989 and 1993 I had a collaboration project with Dutch artist Bert Wils. We worked under the name
‘Waterszoon’ and we made several installations. One of the projects we did was ‘Interlace’.
Interlace was on display in Gallery City without walls in Newark and in Gallery Rita Dean, San Diego. We used 56 images in different combinations in 7 large circles.

Unknown cities and other projects / Peter Spaans / page 5

1 slide..

Carl Hazlewood wrote about the project Interlace:Interlace in good modern fashion, eschews any formal excess and takes possession of its space through a carefully measured involvement with the gallery structure itself - and as a consequence with any viewers occupying the area.
3 slides.
However, the metaphoric, and lyrical complexity suggested by these seven large circles shown in sets of sixteen small circular photographs or screenprints, belie a strictly formalist motivation.
Although the subject matter of the photographs and print / constructions, include few human figures (photo’s of the artists in the latest 1970’s), most seem to address issues of place, and cultural anonymity.
The views chosen are never the ones ‘commodified’ by tourism such as the Statue of Liberty standing proudly, lamp held high, against the dying light of the day. Rather, their proclivity is for the unromanticised, the generic, collapsible view from a distance of the human hive.
Familiar and interchangeable, be it the Bronx, East Germany, Rottterdam or Newark, this human element becomes more evident by its absence. This evanescent critical quality is what, in the end, humanise these spare and nuanced structures.
Next 2 works I made in the past years:

Several City, 1997.
1 slide

The work was on display in the main venue of the Second Johannesburg Biennial, 1997-1998.
This big work of 4 big b/w photographs and 144 small color and b/w photographs are taken in different cities in the world. Pictures taken during walks through streets and crossing bridges and looking around. Just plain walking through cities. These are common photographs. Not spectacular, no well known views; just common places you can find everywhere in this world. When I built this work in Johannesburg, South Africa, people who live in Johannesburg recognised their neighbourhoods. I told them that is not possible: I did not shoot any of those photographs in Johannesburg. But they are common images, which you can find everywhere in this world.
It evidently also says something about the appearance of and the life in the city everywhere in western society and also more and more in other societies . Therefore the photos can be combined so effortlessly. You see the difference- although you might have to look hard - but there is definitely something in common.

Unknown cities and other projects / Peter Spaans / page 6

It is not meant as a direct comparison. 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’.

slide:
The last years I work also in many projects together with Dutch artist Hans Eijkelboom. We did many shows together in Holland, Germany and even New York. Hans Eijkelboom’s photographic work largely consists - to put it briefly - in an investigation into how society manifests itself in its everyday appearance. Eijkelboom has taken his own life as the starting point for this inquiry. He consistently portrays his daily experience and his direct surroundings. The early series of photographs were often about how the personality of every individual is determined by social role, appearance and sub-culture. Eijkelboom’s later photographs record how his cultural environment is crystallised in images of daily life (text by Gerrit Willems).

We worked together in some of the next projects:
NO WAY OUT, first appearance in Discotheque The Move, Arnhem in 1998.
1 slide

Last year shown in art space Safe, Dalfsen. Part of my project The office.
This work, is special made for uncommon spaces with different walls. This room is dark and in the middle of this room is a round turning table with 4-6 slide projectors on it with each 80 slides projecting on the walls automatically. The room is not squire but has several strange walls, so the projections changed every time because of the different angles, distances between projectors and walls and because of the movement of the turn table where the projectors are standing on. On the walls you can see images from New York made in 1997 and 1998, color and b/w. You can see images of streets and buildings, views from bridges and people walking in the streets. Text is added: NO WAY OUT (in different colours). Here are some slides of this project:
11 slides

Unknown cities and other projects / Peter Spaans / page 7

Another project was:
Bricks build your mind, 1999.
1 slide

This work was on display in Gallery Oele, Amsterdam, 1999.
This work that is built as it is a stone wall, has images about a trip I made with Hans in New York. My photographs are about distance, travelling, overviews, streets and buildings and the photographs of Hans are about people, close ups, etc. In the middle of this work there is one photo with some men and how they are looking to the camera. The only photograph with real communication between subject and photographer: Hans asked them if they did not mind to be photographed. The title of this work tells us what images do with us; how they shape our consciousness. In the years we live we see so much around us. All those images are doing something with us. They form our way of living. I think for blind people it is different. They form their lives with sounds. They know what distance is by hearing all kind of sounds. But when you can see, you built up during your life an immense library of images. And these images, in combination with sounds and so on are the basis for how to live.

We made a lot of books and magazines together They are part of an ongoing series of books, published by Under construction art projects, Amsterdam / New York. All the books have something to do with men in cities, just wondering around, looking around for what? The latest book is called: Finally he arrived in Hardenberg. A book about a man who always passed the tiny town of Hardenberg by train and finally decided to get off and walking around inthat little town he never went before.

Next slide gives you an impression of a works, made by myself but exhibited in one of the same presentations together with Hans Eijkelboom:

Time is always busy, 1999.
1 slide

Unknown cities and other projects / Peter Spaans / page 8

This work was on display in Gallery Oele, Amsterdam, 1999.
Time is always busy, in every stone, in every corner of the streets, in our way of thinking and moving around, our science: time is always busy. In these 8 photographs of Berlin, New York, Paris and Antwerp you can imagine what time does with our environment. Everything changes all the time, we try to keep it and it goes away. What we want to keep is our feeling of safety, what we think what is safe and what belongs to us; what is part of our culture, our daily life. That is what we want to keep. But time is always busy. We have to change too. Otherwise we miss our connection with our present time. In this work 8 different moments in time and place. Part of seconds. It realy doesn't matter where they were taken. They are here now. As a calibration of our past time.

Slide with text: Looking around.
4 slides of New York and San Diego, during looking around.

My mission is to explore my walks and relate them to the so called real world; the world we are living in. This reflects my seeing in other eyes. 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. You can check it. I am the only one able to recognise the hidden things in the streets. 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. I am the only one who, at that moment, who has taken a piece of reality on the memory plate of a photograph or video. I am the only one seeing in that time and in that way that special spot. 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. The view is different or the moment in time or a combination of the two. 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. In my own memory it is also different. Time is forever. Memory of myself is choosing too in a different way. Memories of other people are different than mine. 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? This is partially cultural. There are so many different perceptions of reality. John Berger had right. 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. I am constantly thinking about everything. There is so much in my mind.

Unknown cities and other projects / Peter Spaans / page 9

Slide with text: ‘UNKNOWN CITIES’
I am working on a major video work that is related to the cities where the ‘Mirror’s Edge’ exhibition is on display: Unknown cities, and that will be at the end a big work of art including 7 video presentations in one major work. I also think of photo tableaus and a book presentation. I already shoot video in Vancouver and Umea 4 slides of Umea.

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 Williamsburgbrige 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. My idea is to make a work which extend the video presentation of Williamsburgbrige. 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 Williamsburgbrige, Umea, Vancouver, Turin, Glasgow and Copenhagen walk video’s and a new walk crossing the Williamsburgbrige again several years later. The circle is complete. This project is a work for 7 screens at the same time random playing. 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, independing of the changes in the loudness of the sound of each screen.

Slide with text: Unknown places.
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,
4 slides of Umea

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

Unknown cities and other projects / Peter Spaans / page 10

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 realy 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 artic 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. I show during this exhibition my work Williamsburgbrige, made in 1994.

1 slide:

It is the openings work of this exhibition. This work is about my walk I made over the Williamsburgbrige 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.
7 SLIDES: Williamsburgbridge.

In this film the sound is extremely important. During this tour of ‘Mirror’s Edge’ I am forced to go to cities I don’t know. I have to film these for me unknown cities and to give them a place in my world.
And by making these films and photographs public through exhibitions, broadcasting, publications and so on, the images will also be part of yourself and others outside my world. 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.

Thank you very much (end of lecture).