(De)/(A)ccelerated Living
In an extremely cold and quiet Academiegalerie I watch a lone man standing in a sea of snow and ice. It's Guido van der Werve, on the Northpole. On April 28th 2007, van der Werve stood for 24 hours on the same spot, on top the world, literally. Throughout these 24 hours, he did not turn with the world.
Though at the end of his performance the date had changed from the 28th to the 29th, van der Werve did not experience any change in time. For him, the sun never rose and never set.
Accompanied by soothing piano music, composed by the artist himself, this piece of timelapse photography really makes one think. First of all, of course, about time and our experience of it. We are all capable of defying clock- or calendar time, we do it all the time. Just hop on a plane, the nex timezone is never far away. But Guido van der Werve took the defying of time to a whole new level and didn't even allow the sun to tell him the time of day.
Secondly, I thought of the artist. I sympathize with him. The cold he had to endure, the seemingly infinite amount of time he had to stay upright, the endless white planes surrounding him. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like. This man has perseverance, willpower, and he knows what he's doing.
The result: a wonderful work of art.
At night, time suddenly accelerated and things took a different turn. I traded in the calm and icy Academiegalerie for a warm and crowded Theater Kikker. The Main hall was bursting with energy, a complete 180 from the atmosphere at the Academiegalerie. Dirk de Bruyn and Joel Stern opened the second half of the Dopes to Infinity programme and they really went to town with this performance. The pounding beats and aggressive noise of Stern made the room vibrate and slowly transported me to the edge of my seat, where I was held in place for the remainder of the performance by the overwhelming array of projections, film and flicker images by Dirk de Bruyn. I didn't know where to look or what to listen to, and even now I don't really know what to write down. The screen alone showed three different projections with frames passing by at a dizzying speed, made even more intense by the equally dizzying noises of the soundtrack. De Bruyn projected his own, as well as our shadows onto the walls by means of a handheld flashlight, which also held the power to transform the projectors themselves into the projected.
On top of all these sounds and images, there was Dirk himself, pacing around the room, fiddling with the projectors and letting out distorted primal screams, which were then echoed again by Joel Stern. It was a battle.
Written by: Nikki Gijselhart
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