Hamletmachine

exhibition
The Centraal Museum organised the retrospective exhibition Recht voor zijn raap, a selection of the youngest generation of visual artists, designers, and architects who received a starting grant for their work from the Fonds BKVB, between 2006 and 2008. Work was shown by 31 promising artists who shared with the public their clear and confrontational statements about today’s society.

installation
In many of our works, we approach the theatrical environment as a space for visual art. In this case, we site theatrical material in a visual art context. We transform a space based on the postmodern Heiner Muller text called The Hamletmachine. The Hamletmachine is a long, sweeping tirade against life, a big slag-off. Yet there is also a lot of vitality in the text that seems to be expressed in the seconds between life and death. The high and narrow space and balcony gave us the idea for a fall, a hysterical fall. There are walls with whitewashed black cloth, over which hangs a layer of wrinkled chicken wire, which itself houses nests of curly iron. The upper space is covered with gold emergency blankets, dripping paint, polyurethane foam, stretched ropes, and black tulle. The staircase is packed with indigo kite paper, and the floor is made of mirrors. We illuminate the room with fluorescent lamps and six sodium-vapor street lights. Five sound sources play whispering voices. In the middle of the room is a glowing body of epoxy resin. When you look at the body from the balcony, it seems to fall or jump. The mirrors make the body float, and double the depth.