‘YOUR SPACE OR MINE?’

This is the general title that covers my (re-)search of nomadic aspects in urban life. What puzzles me the most in this matter is the position that space holds. Therefore the theoretical study I started, soon turned out to become also a visual research towards the concept of camps and sheltered daydreaming .

When Architecture is seen as static, and as a symbol of sedentary culture, than a camp stands for movement and is part of a nomadic way of life. The series of photographs , presented as CAMPS, own a documental character but with a fictional side. All camps are in fact build and placed especially for the purpose of the photograph. Those camps are a distillation, of different aspects of the shelter, and I build them that way.

It was not my initial goal to build camps, and show them as a sculpture or installation. Showing them as a photograph is in this case necessary, because of the documental character of the medium and because the photographical representation of the camp becomes immediately also the ruin. Camps are not built to stand forever. They arise quickly at a certain place, appearing as if they always were and will be there; they can be dismantled within seconds, and disappear into ‘the wilderness’ like guerrilla troops do ...

After a while the poetic notion that can be seen in the use and creation of intimate space , became more important than the mostly formal and documental aspects of CAMPS . This can be found in SHELTERS OF REFUSE. Although the shelter becomes a desolated ruin very quickly, it can also function as a place that generates daydreaming. This daydream is one of the most superior ways to ‘ kill ’ time, and to become in control of the own rhythm. You could say that these spatial demarcations, function as nomadic gateways , traces of alienation; sheltered daydreaming as a method to refuse. SHELTERS OF REFUSE are the sculptural crystallizations of CAMPS. They are build and placed in an urban landscape.