Sunday was another presentation by 4 DAI participants at FLAT_land (Bij wijze van Spreken) organised in collaboration with id11 and STeC in Delft. Here are also some photo’s of the presentations and installations on view.
Julio Pastor’s residency in apartment 603 focused on collecting ‘Evidence’ from the previous inhabitants. Combining watercolour paintings, Polaroids and printed digital photographs Pastor created a map that serves as an investigation into the personalities of these people, their ways of living and how their daily lives might have been affected by the environment of the neighbourhood. All of the work that was produced during his stay was left in the flat, in this way becoming ‘evidence’ of his own living experience in Delft.
When Jimini Hignett heard she would have an empty apartment to work in for 4 months she knew straight away what she should do. Upon receipt of the key to the apartment she would offer it to a family of refugees so that they could live there! Unfortunately, logistically none of this worked out. Instead Hignett met Barbara, a homeless woman from Washington D.C. who left everything behind and came to the Netherlands because God sent her a message through a dream! In apartment 636 she talks (and talks) about her life in the video ‘Godsend’.
Suzanne van Rest’s installations combine sculptures and photographs that address the subject of light. In ‘Overexposed II’ one installation incorporates sculptures and photographs that capture a certain moment and quality of ‘Delft’ light. The second work consists of a photograph, taken of an ‘overexposed’ apartment. In this way van Rest makes her presence visible in Delft through the use of strong, artificial light.
In contrast to light Raymond Huizinga explores aspects of darkness, mentally as well as physically, through his use of a blackened plastic apartment. No light enters and only foreboding sound emanates as one approaches. In his installation ‘The Shape’, Huizinga constructs plastic, blow-up figures that he manipulates, flagellates and terminates during a series of performances in this closed-off and sealed apartment. The audience was offered the opportunity to experience another side of life.
