europeancityseminars: Anneke INGWERSEN - Luftschlösser, Ivory Towers and “Doorzonhuisen”…

Second try, because of the bad letter:

Public Spaces constitute an interface for personal perceptions and projections, where imaginations and visual illusions emerge. Besides of being a place where rational restrictions, logical laws and public interests dominate, public streets are at the same time a ‘no - man’s – land’. As such they have the potential of being reshaped by individuals. Over and over again. As an Artist I participate in this reshaping of Urban Space.

In my Fine Art I focus on the combination of the experience of public space and the connotations of optics. Alienation of spaces by shadow - light play is the central theme in my art and my research. By this the aspects of Space and Optics in term of physical experiences are getting together. Especially the possibilities of misguiding the viewer during the process of visual perception grab my attention.

Existing architecture and the structure of public spaces are the starting point for an artistic process. I combine the research about the history of a place with the process of imagination and drafting Fine Art works. This culminates in short videos, light-installations and series of photography’s.

In Brussels I will present this artistic research by some art projects concerning the use of public space realized by myself and others.

In 2007, I concentrated on the psychological Gaze. The starting point was the special Dutch kind of terrace house, the ‘Doorzonhuis’, where the sun can shine through, from the front directly to the back and so does the gaze. During that time I made the video “Leyla in Doorzonland”, where the slightly voyeuristic character Leyla gets a look in the house of the neighbours. It struck me that voyeurism is facilitated by the structure of architecture.

In 2008, my fascination for the philosophical concept of “Panoptism” as used by Michel Foucault resulted in the light-installation “Secret Room”. The term “Panopticum” was used both for the famous “freakshow’s” allover Europe during the last centuries and for the special kind of architecture for a prison introduced by Bentheim, in which the situation of the ‘seeing - it - all’ was created. My different interests came together: the power of the gaze of the other; the human behavior in public space; architecture and shadow play.

‘The concept of Strangeness and Recognition in Art and Philosophy, The Artist’s view on Migration and Alienation’ was the topic of my thesis paper, during the graduation from BA Of Fine Arts. Using P. Leary’s concept of “Strangeness and Recognition” on the street as an interface of meeting and judging, I take photography’s in urban spaces, documenting people and their interactions, f.e. for the book Moskow, in 2006.

I will finish the lecture with an insight into the incomplete process of “Man on the Hill”, exemplary for my long during interest in the political and corporate changes of 1989 in Europe and what that did with my imagination.

Anneke Ingwersen

Castle-In-The-Air, Russia