Column

June, 2007

"End exam exhibition in W139",

W139

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

The Blaauwlakenblok, the area where W139 has had its home since 1979, is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Amsterdam. For years, the City of Amsterdam has been planning to renovate this sixteenth-century quarter. W139 has finally reopened after the term of it's renovation. This very process of renovation spurred my interest in the historical character of the architecture's supporting structures, such as the vertical columns cutting through the space. Usually, these columns are not scrutinized by people who visit to the space, they are merely gazed upon as just a part of the building. However, instead of seeing these as purely functional I wanted to offer the idea of the 'column' with an alternative 'personal' language, and relieve it from the sole heavy burden of supporting the ceiling. I wanted to de-contextualise the column from its original architectural function. My idea was to expose the column with its foundations uprooted and placed on the gallery floor. For this reason, I built an additional column, the same dimensions as the two columns already in W139 but this time with the addition of the foundation structure. I wanted it to be built with very simple construction processes, like some sort of delicate skeleton using wood and cement, visually displacing it from the other two. This additional column also had a transient life, existing only for the time of its exhibition. This factor was a key element to the concept of the work, where I wanted the column's transparency and fragility to extend a certain poignancy to a particular moment within a long timeline. I wanted to express the column as a metaphor for the memory of the space as well as a meeting point between my personal perspective of the space and the perspectives of passing viewers. I saw myself and the viewers as passengers of the space imbued by the column since the birth of the building in the 16th Century. I wanted to connect with the 'presentness' of the space whilst thinking about the statements: 'where one is' determines 'what one sees'. 'who one is' determines 'what one  will see' and 'where one will be'. In this way the column which I made became a monument to each person held at a present moment in time, rooted in a particular place. The additional column referred to history but did not exist as a historical object itself.