“In the Unlikely Event of…”
an installation in museum Witte de With (Rotterdam) for “the People’s Art”, ‘farewell’-exhibition of director Bartomeu Mari, 2000/01
Witte de With CfCA, Rotterdam ('the People's Art')
A monitor at the entrance of the museum shows images that are derived from safety-instructions one finds on aeroplanes. Later the visitor enters a large museum-room filled with a stage- or film set that is constructed from sculptures, paintings and a tv. A live-camera registers the set and broadcasts images to the monitor.
The installation lays bare a visual language constructed out of images we usually associate with art, beauty and styling. This time they are used to communicate about subjects that we find too cruel to imagine.
The set-up of this installation (with a live-camera and a prop-set) is more or less similar to that of an earlier installation; ‘the Rise and Fall of Nunhead Cemetery’, (shown amongst others at the van Abbe-museum in Eindhoven).
In a strange way time caught up on me with this piece. I started working on this installation in 2000. I travelled to Holland to discuss the possibilities of showing it at an art-space in Rotterdam. On the 11th of September 2001 I had a meeting with the organizer of an exhibition in Rotterdam (Witte de With contemporary art space) . After we agreed to include this work I took a plane home to London where I lived at that time. When the airplane touched down the unimaginable had happened...