User:Dennis van Vreden/roodkapjeprojectdescription
The installation is an invitation to enter a world you haven't experienced before. It can be addressed from two modes. The projection and the 'twisted' image of Dorothy whose complete control lies in your decisions. The classic, unattainable, image of Dorothy suddenly is attainable and sort of destroyable in a sense. And the second notion, with is the performance of the visitor/user. Or even better, the consciousness of the visitor.
The choice for the Wizard of Oz foremost was because of the Musical Symposium that was taking place during the Open Day of the Piet Zwart Institute. To apply this technique of the Kinect to the Wizard of Oz I want to show that the movie, to me at least, will forever have relevance. It is a classic. At the same time it also has a 'kill your darlings' feeling, since Dorothy gets completely digitally manipulated.
When I first presented at the Piet Zwart Institute I opened with the line that "Beyoncé is my spirit animal". I want to present Beyoncé as a contemporary Victorian experience. Beyoncé as the ultimate object for 'letting go'. At the moment I am reading Inventing the Victorians, a book that is trying to explain that we invented our image about the Victorian identity as racist prudes, even though they might have been the most active, open and experimental about their sexual expressions and they didn't have any laws about immigrants during their time. Releasing the beast inside of you. I want to see that side of people that they never show. The type of behavior that you only do between your own four walls when no one else is around. All coming from a fascination about the difference between who we are and how we behave, how we express ourselves.
Using the Kinect is entirely new to me. This is the first time that I am using it and the first time I am working interactively. In photography I was always busy researching the body and portrait photography. And now with the Kinect I am continuing this by literally and physically doing something with the body, in a much more active way. It works completely independent. It's not too complicated to understand and use, it only asks the visitor to take a certain pose for the machine to calibrate the skeleton. So it is an excellent way to get quick reactions. I think the "I did something" result is more interesting than the "I've seen something". It's almost performance art, and there are two performances, that of the Kinect and that of the user/visitor.
At the moment I am interested in the notion of immersion. To be completely consumed by something, like the cinematic experience. To be in a black box with a larger than life projection. I want to take it a step further and completely surround the visitor with surreal elements. It adds a layer to the feeling you get from the Kinect, a sort of "what's happening here" feeling. You surrender to the technique, unknowingly how it's working. It is also strongly inspired by the experience I had whiten I visited Anish Kapoor's Leviathan at the Grand Palais in Paris. It is my goal in life to create such a magnificent world. Sometimes it seems like I have been left behind in the Romantic period. A visual escapism research. How I see it, for the Wizard of Oz version I would create gigantic flowers out of plastic and cover the ceiling with soft clouds. The Beyoncé version now is going to have clouds and angels through space and have a pattern of shelves on the floor. I created the image by taking Botticelli's Birth of Venus and replacing Venus with Beyoncé. A lot of inspiration for that choice is coming from seeing Jean Charles de Castelbajac's work that I saw once in a small gallery. Glory in Coma was one of those works.
It is still new for me to make these works. In 2010 I finished my BA in Graphic Design, but I wanted to continue and produce my own work. I have always dreamed about these works and slowly they are taking shape now that I am studying in the Piet Zwart Institute. Why I want to present it now is because I am ready to receive feedback. I want to document the reactions/performances and upload them on a website. Not a single movement will be left out. I want to turn the behavior of the visitors into the performance. The camera will be hidden. An idea would be to livestream the opening on the internet. Only showing the visitors in the space without the projection. That's why I find it perfect to run it in Roodkapje. Where on a daily basis people walk by the location and can have a quick look into the exhibition and maybe have a quick visit inside as well. A varied audience is what the installation is asking for. I know how I feel about transforming into Dorothy, but I want to see what happens when someone is semi forced into this 'cross-dressing' situation. To give someone that tiny bit of guilty pleasure to be a girl running around with a purse for 5 mnutes.
Interesting about the fact that it is coinciding with two other shows that have no connection to mine is that I want it to have a dialogue with what is going on around the installation. It is in Rotterdam, where everything lives side by side. It is interesting to have this escapism feeling in the installation. It would be totally different in other contexts. I would rather see the installation next to other works that are about something completely different, than see it in an exhibition about a mutual theme.