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Heaven Peter Bogers
1995 (work in the collection of the ‘Stedelijk Museum
Amsterdam’) The
original work was made in 1995 commissioned by the ‘Festival aan de Werf’ in Utrecht,
which is a yearly theatre festival, including visual art projects on special
locations into its concept. Together
with the organisation of the festival, a small empty house was found in the
centre of Utrecht. This house was on the nomination to be broken down. Except
for the wooden floors, all three rooms of it were painted white. People were
free to enter, and scattering around the rooms they encountered a great many
small black and white monitors. The images
on all of these monitors last no longer then one second, and accompanied by
sound are played forward for one second and backward for one second, in
endless repetition. The viewer can concentrate on one specific picture and
the belonging sound, but he/she can also experience the mixed sounds as
a rhythmic machine, gradually changing
when walking around. One of
the pictures is shown on a small TV, with an antenna attached to it. It is
also the only picture that is brought inside the enclosed walls of the house,
from the outside world. The images were broadcasted on Dutch television in 1995. We see a live recording, made by a
surveillance camera, of the actual start of the earthquake in Kobe Japan.
Again one second of this broadcast has been isolated, and is played back and
forth. Due to
the purchase of the work by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, a second version
of the work has been made in 1996. All
monitors are placed on one room. Not all of the sounds are played at the same
time anymore, a gradually changing composition is created. For
instance, at a certain point one can hear a combination of three sounds,
let’s say: The ticking clock, the cat and the door. Gradually the door-sound
is faded out and replaced by the heartbeat sound, and so forth. |
