Gallery Rianne Groen 2015

In 2015 I visited Gallery Rianne Groen and saw some interesting art. Often the art is complex, mysterious and unexpected. It combines everyday parts to create strange jewels. Also it is way above my financial possibilities and not my wife's taste. But I love this gallery.

Indeed, a culture is kept alive by the interaction of all its parts. Its progress is an alchemical process, in which all its varied ingredients can combine to form new jewels. (Gerald Holton, quoted in: Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality (Edward Frenkel))

The corner text by Wouter Venema is not a poem but an object, a painting, a drawing.

Wouter Venema, Two words, 2015

The combination of artworks can be puzzling and even unsettling at times:

A thing cannot be reduced to the definitions we give of it, because then the thing would change with each tiny change in its known properties. A good rule of thumb is as follows: 

unless a character gives rise to different interpretations, unless a scientific entity endures changed notions of its properties, unless a philosopher is entangled in contradictory assertions over one and the same concept, unless a new technology has unforeseen impact, unless a politician’s party is one day disappointed, unless a friend is able to generate and experience surprises, then we are not dealing with anything very real. (Graham Harman, The horror of phenomenology)

The corner of a large painting was sacrificed to be used as a postcard.

That kind of fruitful damage makes great conceptual art.

Marijn van Kreij, Untitled (BRESFSI1013, Postcard), 2014, Lower right corner used as a postcard.

Recently, Van Kreij sent a corner of his work shown in the exhibition (Untitled (BRESFSI1013, Postcard)) to Van Duijvenboden. The envelope used to send the piece is present in the drop box on the floor (the original corner is now on show at A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam).

From a strange planet - 14

Road webcam fascination - The silent pictures of Scandinavian traffic-webcams have a strange fascination for me. My previous outpourings of webcam obsession are here: 1: Discovery, 2: From deep space, 3: Don DeLillo, 4: Scipting surveillance art, 5: Making movies, 6: Sightings and glitches, 7: More sightings, 8: Google streetview, 9: Changes in time, 10: Events, 11: Living streetlight, 12: Dino Buzzati, 13: Ed Ruscha, 15: Traffic cones, 16: Nothing, 17: Nothing and 18: Melting snow. I've used video, fiction, literary criticism, art, topography and surveillance technologies to think through this window on far-away places.

---

I have thought much about this view. I lack the words to describe its atmosphere. The bridge, the sea, the shed and the lamp. The arrangement is more than the sum of its parts.

I tried to imagine a story:

Two locals drive to work each day and cross the bridge. They speculate what's inside the little building. They make hypotheses. The discuss the meaning of the light and the sign. The speculations slowly escalate, starting with a toolshed, and then going from a measuring station, an industrial control system, to a modern chapel and a small temple to the bridge god. But there's never time to test those. And then one day the small building is gone, removed, burned down, blown up. Or just moved to the other side of the road.

 

Or another story:

Two locals drive to work each day and cross the bridge. They discuss the strange behaviour of light in this area. Sometimes they see a strange glow under the bridge. On some day the shed light burns more brightly. On other days they see the streetlight behaving strangely.

They discuss the theories of Igor Savchenko:

We no longer have a constant flow of sunlight. Light appears to us as a sequence of transient storms. Everything around us is lit up for brief instants. The world picture shimmers. But moments of light and darkness still alternate too fast, for us to notice them.

They retell local urban legends about ghosts, trolls, and dead hitchhikers. But they never reach a conclusion.

Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. But sometimes fiction is stranger than reality. It is very hard to make good, strange fiction, that enhances reality. Let's be thankful to writers who can do that. Otherwise our world could be just like the one Thomas Ligotti is describing.

I once knew a man who claimed that, overnight, all the solid shapes of existence had been replaced by cheap substitutes: trees made of flimsy posterboard, houses built of colored foam, whole landscapes composed of hair-clippings. His own flesh, he said, was now just so much putty. Needless to add, this acquaintance had deserted the cause of appearances and could no longer be depended on to stick to the common story. Alone he had wandered into a tale of another sort altogether; for him, all things now participated in this nightmare of nonsense. But although his revelations conflicted with the lesser forms of truth, nonetheless he did live in the light of a greater truth: that all is unreal. (The Shadow at the Bottom of the World (Thomas Ligotti))

When I compare the camera pictures with the Google pictures I see two different worlds. Which is the real one? And which one is made of cardboard?

From a strange planet - 18

Road webcam fascination - The silent pictures of Scandinavian traffic-webcams have a strange fascination for me. My previous outpourings of webcam obsession are here: 1: Discovery, 2: From deep space, 3: Don DeLillo, 4: Scipting surveillance art, 5: Making movies, 6: Sightings and glitches, 7: More sightings, 8: Google streetview, 9: Changes in time, 10: Events, 11: Living streetlight, 12: Dino Buzzati, 13: Ed Ruscha, 15: Traffic cones, 16: Nothing, and 17: Nothing. I've used video, fiction, literary criticism, art, topography and surveillance technologies to think through this window on far-away places.

---

Between March and April of 2019 the roadside snow has receded. The traffic cams have seen winter going and spring coming. In the lower two pictures you can see how the snow recedes from one day (April 13) to the other day (April 14). Where are the snows of yesteryear? Without the camera it would just be a memory (see also here).

Small islands and promontories of snow have molten in the sunlight.

The strange snow figure from Easter Island has left. And new roads have been revealed. 

Small islands of snow remain in the grass and on the mountains.

The shoulder of the road is free of snow. Old dry branches reappear. But in the woods the snow remains.

The thin layer of snow is just a memory now. 

From a strange planet - 17

Road webcam fascination - The silent pictures of Scandinavian traffic-webcams have a strange fascination for me. My previous outpourings of webcam obsession are here: 1: Discovery, 2: From deep space, 3: Don DeLillo, 4: Scipting surveillance art, 5: Making movies, 6: Sightings and glitches, 7: More sightings, 8: Google streetview, 9: Changes in time, 10: Events, 11: Living streetlight, 12: Dino Buzzati, 13: Ed Ruscha, 15: Traffic cones. and 16: Nothing. I've used video, fiction, literary criticism, art, topography and surveillance technologies to think through this window on far-away places.

---

Last time I wrote about a zebra crossing where nothing happens. Today I'll write about an unfinished asphalt road where also nothing ever happens. I've followed the webcam for several years and the place is in stasis. I don't see any good use for the camera. 

Even at night nothing happens. I see no people and no animals. Traffic is very light.The camera is watching and waiting, but for what? Now there is even video from this place.

Watching a place where nothing happens reminds me of Project Hessdalen, also in Norway. As the project website says:

Hessdalen is a small valley in the central part of Norway. At the end of 1981 through 1984, residents of the Valley became concerned and alarmed about strange, unexplained lights that appeared at many locations throughout the Valley. Hundreds of lights were observed. At the peak of activity there were about 20 reports a week.

In Hessdalen several cameras are watching the landscape full time. You can look at the video recordings of special events. You don't know if you see something mysterious or something mundane. The recordings look like conceptual art. An abstract landscape where maybe something could happen or has happened.

These webcam pictures have the same atmosphere of Waiting for Godot. But this time Godot will be caught on camera.

 The Google maps surroundings of this place are actually quite pretty. A typical Nordic landscape with birch trees and snow. The webcam looks suburban but the place is rural.