The artist says, “During the years 2000-2003, I had an atelier in Jan Swammerdam Institute (JSI) – or as it was known SmartProjectSpace building. Since we all knew that the building will be demolished in some point in the future, I made a project , photographing most of the studios in the building during 2002-3.In 2004, when the demolition of the building was taking place, I made a project of photographing the process of demolition in a digital stills camera. As a result I edited fragments from the stills to a video work called ‘lelijk is het niet’.
In the process of doing this work, I realized the enormous emotional response that a process of demolition of a public institute brings upon a surface. As an expatriate, I felt I felt that my connection to Amsterdam got stronger, since I witness the ‘life cycle’ of a building approximately my age, which was destroyed.
Reflecting upon earlier groups of projects, which dealt with the visualization of public order and hierarchical structures- Works Coordinated in Advance, I realized that this work is an introduction of the ‘other end’ of visualization of social order (de-structure). My resistance to the ‘demolition’ approach, lies in the fact that visual identity of a city is mainly created by the buildings its inhabits. At the moment there are almost no buildings left from the sixties and the seventies, when the thinking of the welfare state was prominent. It is a’ sign of the time’ – shift towards ‘tough’ capitalist model, in which ideas about equality, positivism, freedom are almost not there anymore.
The work function best, in a ‘window’ installation situation, projected from inside toward outside, so it is visible to who ever pass in the street. It becomes a part of the visual structure of the building, and thus commenting over the present.”
For more information: www.ilyarabinovich.com
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