Space Invaders
2005 | site specific installation in a private space | video screening | zoetroop on a turntable | postcards
A site specific work consisting of three elements, to be displayed in the private living room of a private person (specific person). The installation includes a vertical screening, a Zoetrope and a series of postcards.
This work is part of our interest in a very specific type of 'time and space travel'; situations in which we are thrown into scenarios different from our own, re-invent them, re- interpret them, change the course of things, based mainly on our imagination and fantasies, in relation to a given context.
For this work, we contacted Raffaele, who was going to host our work. we asked him to tell us about a place in Rotterdam which carries a special meaning to him. He sent us to the old GEB building, where he was lving during his studential years together with some of his best friends.
We visited the GEB tower, which was built in 1931 as a skyscraper and considered the highest in Europe at the time. The building housed the offices of the Dutch electricity company, and only later was transformed into students' residencies.
The work we made for Raffaele's apartment relates both to his stories about the place and to our immediate impressions from our visit to it.
Before arriving in Rotterdam we contacted Raffaele, the person who would host our work and asked him to tell us about a place in Rotterdam, which carries a specific significance to him. We visited this place, after have imagined it through Raffaele’s descriptions and memory, in an attempt to create our own intimacy with it. The outcome is a souvenir from a visit to an actual and a mental territory which is not our own.
The vertical video is projected on the living room’s curtains. It shows the GEB building, while its windows function as audio meters display, reacting to the sound of a gong.
On the living room table we installed a hand made zoetrope - a pre-cinematic moving image device, showing a primitive animation of a fire in the GEB building.
In addition, a series of postcards, printed in one strip, depicted our fantasised visit to the building.