Both sides of the tunnel are fully equipped with LED strips with 31,000 white, bright LED lights, from top to bottom and back to front. In front of it, a screen of frosted and tempered (vandal resistant) glass with a water-like pattern is placed. In general, all the LEDs are switched on, 24 hours a day. But within this overwhelming light, there will be moving silhouettes, where the LEDs are off. It appears that animals are moving directly behind the ripples of the glass. Here we tell a story about light. Or maybe better; about shadows, the absence of light.

The animals that pass here are those of Transvaal in South Africa. They are the ‘big five’: elephant, rhino, lion, buffalo and leopard. And just like on safari, us -the people- are just visitors. When lucky, you will see a buffalo grazing, a leopard that just woke or an elephant lifting his head. With some bad luck, you will see nothing happening, you will see just light. We experience the slowness and capriciousness of everyday wildlife. This is not a spectacular nature documentary on television format, but a life-size print of real animal life over a long time that can continue to intrigue. A layered image that is sometimes reminiscent of the shadow play of Indonesian Wayang puppets, sometimes to the primitiveness of prehistoric cave paintings. And a few will even recognize his personal animal nature in the shade. Here everyone will tell their own story.

Het ontwerp voor deze kruising is bedacht vanuit drie perspectieven: vanuit het perspectief van de automobilisten die de stad Amersfoort in- en uitrijden en een glimp kunnen opvangen van een wonderbaarlijke constructie boven de kruising; vanuit het perspectief van degenen die letterlijk door de lichtpylonen heen rijden, fietsen en lopen, en een engelachtige ervaring ondergaan; en vanuit het perspectief van de bewoners van de appartementen die neerkijken op deze kruising en die, met name ’s avonds, de indruk zullen hebben dat iedereen die haar passeert wordt gezegend.

Wat in principe een klassieke ontvlechting van verkeersstromen is, bedacht uit het oogpunt van een efficiëntere, veiligere en betrouwbaardere afwikkeling van het verkeer, is in dit geval een magische vervlechting van onder- en bovenwereld. De onderwereld van de kruising verstopt zich niet, maar openbaart zich op fiere wijze aan de bovenwereld, tot aan de sterren, en daar voorbij.

De tien zwarte panelen van WALKWITHME zijn de weergave van eenzelfde symbolisch slagveld. Originele maquettes, documenten, contracten en schetsen van opdrachtgevers zijn verbrand. Zoals op Oud en Nieuw de kwade geesten verjaagd worden door rood vuurwerk, zo zijn nu de duistere, zwartgallige geesten verdreven, maar net als met de modelvliegtuigen geeft het verbranden het exorcisme een extra lading, omdat unieke en tijdrovende documenten zijn vernietigd.

Deze uitleg heb ik later verzonnen, toen ik werd gevraagd iets te zeggen over de tien panelen. Tijdens de opening van de tentoonstelling heb ik mijn bevriende Italiaanse collega gevraagd wat dit werk in hemelsnaam betekent. Hij gaf het perfecte antwoord: ‘Well, maybe this is the end, maybe this is the beginning, but please walk with me.’

The houseboat is literally (and coincidently) a twin blade, which it also is in figurative terms. As seen from the outside, it appears to be 98% symmetrical. But once inside, your perception capsizes to reveal an asymmetrical structure with two faces. This houseboat has been designed for a couple with completely different characters. Whereas he is a composer and a musician, she is a visual artist. Whereas he is something of a worrier, she is cool, calm and collected. Whereas he is always pale, she is never seen without bright red lipstick. And whereas he works in an underwater cellar in a remarkably integrated and high-ceilinged space, she sits upstairs in a studio with a low ceiling that reflects the water’s surface.

Then there’s the staircase in the middle, which connects these two rooms by way of the bedroom, the living room and the kitchen. Although actually it’s not so much a staircase as an ascent that launches you into the living room… Effectively, this room is the handle that joins the spaces of the “sound cellar” and the “image attic”, that holds them together and creates something communal. And that’s how it should be. The ability to remain as sharp as a knife without getting in each other’s way: in perfect, asymmetrical symmetry.

Click here for the website of the publisher Equal Books

Play Youtube Video

Het strandwachtershuisje is vandalismebestendig omdat het aantal toegangen op de begane grond is geminimaliseerd (slechts 4, waarvan die voor de boot voor het publiek niet herkenbaar is). Bovendien is de buitenkant voorzien van een harde en duurzame afwerking met een toplaag van zand. Onverwoestbaar. De binnenwanden zijn eveneens voorzien van een harde en gladde onderhoudsarme afwerking. Verder is het door de bolle vorm moeilijk beklimbaar en kan het glazen uitkijkoog in de winter beschermd worden door translucente polyester panelen. Ondoordringbaar.

Het strandwachershuisje is net zo contextueel en tegelijk onverwacht als het strand van Nesselande zelf. Het meer en het strand, immers, zijn schitterend ingebed in het stedenbouwkundige plan (beter nog dan het Weerwater in Almere), maar blijft telkens weer verrassen door zijn on-Nederlandse allure. Zo ook het strandwachtershuisje. De voorziening is locatie-eigen door zijn zanderige uitstraling, maar tegelijkertijd onverwacht door zijn eigenzinnige, unieke uitstraling.

At the same time, however, there is the awareness that 90% of our universe consists of dark matter. Matter that could well be the cause of many incomprehensible phenomena in the universe. If you apply this hypothesis to our world, that would mean that fortunately only 10% could really be transparent and obscene. So let us search for the rest, for that 90% dark matter.

Dreams, emotions, plants, stones, but especially animals are part of that 90% dark matter. Animals do not talk. They growl, hiss, whistle, bark. We can hear them, but not understand them. That in itself makes them a mystery. What is more beautiful than staring at an animal that does not say anything? What is more beautiful than an animal that does not communicate and withdraws into its own shadow?

Touring Schedule

(The work of art is a 17-meter-long polyester object of 8 animals that have melted together and that are hung with ropes.  At one of the 2 heads of the sculpture a steel box with 12 screens shows movies of animals, recorded by webcams mostly at exotic locations.)

The building is completely made of polystyrene foam and polyester and is, as such, the world’s largest structure in synthetic materials (50m x 10m x 5m). The available budget meant that it could never have been created using conventional construction methods.

People often wonder about the building’s shape and what it represents, and there are a number of possible answers. A correct answer in architectural terms is that it can be viewed as a large boulder that has been worn away by footsteps and sight lines. A correct answer in philosophical terms is that it can be regarded as a form that has not been pored over but which simply allowed itself to be discovered. A correct answer in terms of the designing process is that it can also be explained as a product of this process, which in this case was somewhat intuitive because of the unfamiliar technical terrain in which everyone had to operate. All these answers are simultaneously correct and irrelevant. Like the white face of a geisha, every opinion and image can be projected onto the building and it has no answers of its own.

Compared to the furthermore generic tunnel the thing seems to have loomed up out of nothing. The thing is all the more strange because the rest – the other concrete walls, the asphalt, the paving stones, the fencing, the illumination lines that are at right angles with the road and the bicycle lane/footpath – looks quite normal. The only extravagance being that orange-red thing.

It is not art, even though it was designed and made with the same limitations. It was not invented to externalise an intimate or personal experience. No, on the contrary, it wants to make an inhuman form of life visible in a usually anonymous tunnel. Only in this way the tunnel is more than a connection between two areas: an alien, immeasurable, asymmetrical and disoriented experience. A tunnel that you will never understand, even though you have been driving through it every day all your life.