The field, an exercise to be an optimist

installation

February-April, 2010

Virtueel Museum Zuidas-artist in residence,

De Kunst Kapel

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

details1

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film      

Onomatopee book     

The development of the Zuidas into an international business center and top location is as large-scale as it is ambitious. They will achieve a whole plan in 2035. Expressive objects in the area are planed and designed with a consciousness to promote rationalisation and efficiency in an optimistic manner. Smoothness, clearness and successfulness are advertised in brightness. Thousands of people are running towards their own destinations in well-organised facilities and offices. With a nonchalant and neutral appearance, the order has been established with regulation abilities to hide emotions and difficulties of the world wide crises. The order imparts grand contrivances. Grand contrivances support grand conceptions. Those are contextualised in 'placeless' economic and global logic. If the grand conception is actualized in its idea then the area is no longer to impart a sense of a human scale. It is uneasy to find diverse meanings of human activities in the site. If this is the future model of a city and life, we must deal with the feeling of monotonousness, facelessness and regulated life by the society. My idea of this installation focuses on an possible exercise to adapt our bodies to the situation. I build a special 'field' for this exercise to extract essences of the Zuid area with the a nonchalant and neutral appearance. By the use of Golf in this special 'field' , we can learn to reduce Curiosities, Emotions and your inner primal wildness in a simple repetition of hitting balls and getting galls. Learning to keep going, and keep trying, it can only be good for mental health to prevent depressions, inertia and other urban syndromes. Overall it will add to our happiness and peacefulness. Then, we are no longer have to struggle with our mind. We will be able to reach the acceptance of the future and all its successful computations. Exercise to be an optimist. With a site specific approach, this is a challenge to transform a thing from the original view (real situation of the area) to an abstract ‘field’ composed with many elements that represent the character of the area. I consider that this work has to be seen between human scale and model scale, between physical reality and imaginations. Up to viewers, I want to hide many possible branches of stories. I do not aspire at making a total harmony, but prefer a disharmony of layers of imaginations. That is because the real world has never had one perspective, but many different perspectives seen depends on people.