The Other / Report of a residency period at Stichting G.A.N.G.'s 'Geheime Bunker'

the-other-15

Engraving the projection into clay using the prototype of the Photographic Hammer

About
In the autumn of 2012 I was artist in residence at ‘De Geheime Bunker’, a project space of Stichting G.A.N.G.
Curator artist-in-residence project: Rob Groot Zevert, Stichting G.A.N.G.
Curator exhibition: Suze May Sho
An interview on the project was done by Peter Nijenhuis and can can be read here

The location: Fueling the cold war
The bunker code-named ‘5VEP’ was constructed as a booster station in NATO’s Central Europe Pipeline System. This pipeline was used to pump aviation fuel to military bases during the cold war. When I arrived it was no longer in use. It was an unpleasant dark and damp space located in the forest, with a penetrating smell of kerosine acting as a constant reminder of it’s past use. To me the bunker embodied the ridiculousness of the cold war; a useless exercise fueled by the concept of The Other.

Method: The Photographic Hammer
By placing a lens in the wall I transformed the bunker into a large format camera. Inside the bunker I placed a projection panel onto which I mounted a wet clay panel. Outside in the surrounding nocturnal forest my models were sitting for hours on a wooden box in a blinding light. Inside in the darkness of the bunker I tried to fix their projected image onto wet clay using my very noisy prototype of the Photographic Hammer.

For the result see works: HCW12-07.2 and HCW12-07.1