DRIFTED TIMES

The experimental video ‘Drifted Times’ is based on a site-specific video installation built in a former Dutch orphanage. The theme ‘orphaned’ was firstly addressed by a historic research. I realised a half-closed space in between the existing file cabinets with black and transparent foils. Then I asked an adopted orphan girl to react in a performance both on the space, the objects and the quotes I found about how orphans lived here centuries ago. Orphans tried to flee the orphanage by going overseas.

The project was made during the artist in residency artgouda in the period from 2nd of May till 5th of June 2016.

Excerpt

Once I saw an old book

Made in wartime

A photo of a brother

Was he dead or just asleep?

This image keeps coming back

Things are happening outside of me

What vessel brought me here?

I hear those voices all the time

Voices that I can not understand

They gave me red and white

Feels like I am being marked out

Becoming some one else’s property

Please let me breathe

The air they brought in was still salty

They came obviously from afar

I was not interested in their travels

It is too heavy to wash ashore

But they gave me a reason

A reason in drifted times

Image report in http://www.mistermotley.nl/art-everyday-life/beeldrapportage-art-gouda

Exhibition review by Hans Overvliet (in Dutch)