Viewing Platforms
Images Installations Text
Viewing Platforms is a work commissioned by Kunstverein Springhornhof intended to address the local environment in this unusual context where a sophisticated land art and conceptual art collection exists in a tiny village of Neuenkirchen in Northern Germany. For this project I looked at the individual and temporary use of the architecture of high-stands in the environment of Neuenkirchen. The viewing platforms are built for hunting and observing wildlife. The views from the high-stand are limited within a certain gazing horizon and the frame of the small windows. I shot seven examples of the observation towers at a relatively close distance in order to recognize details, and from a low angle which emphasized the monumentality and ominous quality of the architecture. With each photograph I produced the countershots from the platform into the landscape with a fixed video-camera and a one hour un-edited video with ambient sound. In the installation I present the large photographs in combination with both video on monitors installed in structure which echoes the high stand architecture and as video projections and in all cases simple benches encourage viewers to take the time to let the landscape appear slowly before their gaze. The videos turn to the landscape and its slowly, continuously and nature-like changings of the light, the draft of the clouds, the grass moving wind etc. Through this bi-media installation I dissect the classical principle of photography, to catch reality in a “moment heureux” in order to represent the space between images.