Read more about the Artistic Research presentation in gallery New Dakota, Amsterdam
I’ve left the city of Amsterdam in February 2019 to do an exchange with the university of Valencia, to learn Spanish and follow, amongst others, a course in Spanish Cinema. During my stay I have made walks and bicycle tours that lasted for half an hour, the free time granted to the user of the so-called Valen-bisi, a system that allows you to pick up a bike on one side of the city and bring it back on the other side of the city. Maps, found objects and (video)images, often shot with a simple telephone, reflect my trips.
AÑORANZA (longing, being homesick)
A large part of my material was shot during the so called Fallas in Valencia. This is a festival lasting for five days. On every street corner sculptures arise of a cartoon-like quality, reflecting the history and stories of specific areas, barrios, of Valencia.
I show a few of my pictures as a large blow-up, made into wall filling paper. These are static images of the so called Ninots when they have just been unloaded from a truck and are still wrapped in plastic.
For me they are something like a seed, they represent the wrapped possibility. Like children’s sweets they are wrapped. Static, frozen in time. A ninot is often the result of hard work of many people, they work on it for a year, and it’s stuffed with firework and firecrackers. These days a ninot is made of polystyrene, so if you burn it, it stinks like hell. In five days time the ninots are unwrapped, exhibited, exposed to views and com- mentaries, they win prices or are neglected. One of them is chosen as a lasting piece in the so-called Fallas Museum. Then all the others are all burned after the so called Nit the Foc (night of the fire).
The woman renting me a room in Valencia is the daughter of a famous Fallas builder. She was fired from her job on the day I first stayed with her. She told me that her con- stant connection with the Fallas maybe made her adept very fast to changes. She never thinks about anything as permanent and it can be gone in one day.
As a contrast with the static images I show a video projection of burning fallas, shown on banners in a spatial setting.
