DETAIL

In the installation DETAIL, a large and massive boulder hangs on the ceiling. It is hanging on a steel cable, on a ball bearing, allowing it to fully turn around its axis. The ball bearing is put in motion by a steel wheel rotated by a motor which takes its energy from solar panels. The whole chain leads to a relatively simple situation: whenever the sun shines, the boulder turns around its axis. Once the sun shines, and therefore the stone starts to revolve, the mechanism is simultaneously unrelenting: the fatalism of a world that has to and will turn. A mobile with sunlight. A surreal image with an undertone of danger and yet fascinating at the same time. 

The whole (complicated) technical construction has no other goal than to have the “poetry” of a heavy colossus float and turn around. DETAIL is in this sense a pointless use of knowledge and material which makes it even all the more alienating. The question can also be put forward as to whether many other developments that we call ‘technical progress’ really do help the world. The destructive potential of ever greater, faster, more efficient and automatic algorithms, processors, motors and fire power assert their influence on a daily basis in wars and in the depletion of our planet. Where is technological knowledge taking us and does it make us able to handle the problems of our age for the most part caused by ‘technological progress’? DETAIL is then also a stationary situation: frozen, hanging in the air, turning in circles in a vacuum.