Video-artist Kim Engelen

W E E K L Y M U S I N G S
Netherlands->to Spain->to USA->now in Sweden
www.kimengelen.com
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Berlin/Germany, Week 20, 2012

[Bridges] Mobility
What about the movement in [Bridges]? The bridge is an inanimate object. The picture showing a person in front of diverse bridges is an inanimate object. By presenting the pictures in a contemplative space, it does trigger the spectator to move. I like this, that the spectator is free. S/he can move, walk by, go back, go nearer, step back, turn around, squat. This is moving the spectator at least physically. So all around this work, people are moving, the participant who makes the picture of the fake-tourist. The tourist in the picture who moves to the places and then the spectator who moves to the exhibition and be exposed to this work, rather they like it or not, they are physically moving.

  • Film/Video:
  • Kurt Krigar, Die Aussicht, 1965
  • Peter Gärtner, Berlin Wall, 1990
  • Joanna Rajkowska, Final Fantasies, 2012
  • Daniel und Jürgen Ast, Die Glienicker Brücke, 2006, watch online»
  • Sissy von Westphalen, Diplomatie im Mauerschatten – Bonns Filiale in Ostberlin, 2005
  • Nan Goldin I’ll Be Your Mirror, 1995, watch online»
  • Dickson Beall, John Baldessari talks with the StLouisan, published 2012, watch online»
  • Yinka Shonibare MBE: Being an Artist | Art21, 2009, watch online»
  • Nam June Paik: In The Artists Studio N.Y.C. 1996, watch online»
  • Zhang Huan: In Conversation, 2010, watch online»
  • Expo:
  • 7th Berlin Biennial, Forget Fear, Berlin/Germany
  • Direct Action Festival, Berlin/Germany
  • [Self-portrait] Email:
  • Samir Foundou: ‘Ben ook héél erg benieuwd naar de boekjes, nog veel plezier in Berlijn (ben wel een beetje jaloers op je hoor ;-) ).‘
  • View pictures»


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Glienicker Brücke, No. 2, Berlin, Germany, 2012

3 days ago

Berlin/Germany, Week 19, 2012

[Bridges]
Beam bridge: The function ist verbinden, und zak das creates the bridge. Mooi de simpelheid, het wat en niet het hoe. I wrote in my notebook: Holiday pics are political, I have the libertad para create these. What did I mean? I can make a picture of me in front of bridge. I can’t always make a picture of me in a church, or museum of shopping mall. The bridge is public? But there are people who live on the bridge, then it is their private space. Filming and photographing is exploiting? Is it my right? I am showing no other person than me, so I am not exploiting any other being. Am I? I still ask an other person to make the picture. It is my work; making pictures, so that means I am asking an other person to work for me. In fact for free? Voluntary. Or is that not correct because I also lie, I don’t tell it is not a holiday picture, it is an art piece. I have to write these thoughts, maybe simplistic or boring or not academic enough, I have no idea how these words come to you. But to me the artist voice is growing fainter, so I have to write. And I like to write, that helps. [Bridges] is also about power and powerlessness. We all have power, but we also don’t have power at all; artist, immigrant, human, animal and that bureaucratic clerk that sends a letter saying; Migrationsverket beslutar att avslå din begaran om registrering som EU/EES-medborgare med uppehållsrätt, that the Migration Board rejects your request for registration as an EU/ EEA national with residence is also in fact powerless. When talking about bureaucracy, I still haven’t read Frans Kafka’s The Trial (Kafka’s original German title: Der Process). Or is it a better word to write; control. This bureaucratic clerk controls the life of a human being completely. No pity, no empathy, no nothing, it is just the system, you need to have money to “be a person”.

John Balderssari, Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, 1972 makes me realize that I should talk also about language. This is so obvious for me that I didn’t do it yet until now…or later. His fantastic video shows a black and white video of a small potted plant. Baldessari holds up a series of alphabet cards in sequence, repeating each letter to the plant until the alphabet is completed. The plant, of course, does not respond. It is simple, effective, a great idea and has an element of humor into it, but could simultaneously be looked upon as slightly violent. Because learning is an active process, the receiver needs to be willing and able. Humiliation is part of it when you can have empathy. But I want to think and write also about: visual action, composition, (not) use of color, spatial relations and about talking, the use of language to get this “work” [Bridges] done. Berlin has so much history, I cannot bypass this. I feel like creating another booklet [Bridges] Berlin. In the “feel” of the city more freely, perhaps rougher with its graffiti all over the city. And also about Ellen my temporarily host for these 3 weeks. She has witnessed the fall of the Wall in 1989, when she was 17. The first border cross was near the Bösebrücke which I photographed last week. I want to show more in this case then “just” the immigration element. I also want to tell her story. Am I appropriation again something here? And while doing learning about the history, what took place. Berlin has more bridges then Venice she told me. The Wall vs. The Bridge. There is something weird about it. The Wall as dividing element and the bridge as connecting element. Why is this suddenly appealing to me? Being here conjured or aroused this.

  • Read:
  • bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, chapters 10-14, 1994
  • Henry A. Giroux, Neoliberalism and the Vocationalization of Higher Education, 2010, read online»
  • Film/Video:
  • Christian Petzold, Barbara, 2012
  • Joanna Rajkowska, Born in Berlin, 2012
  • Artur Zmijewski, The Game of Tag, 1999
  • Pawel Althamer & N.R.M, Sunbeam, 2012
  • Anja Dreschke & Martin Zillinger, The Archive, 2009-2011
  • Anja Dreschke & Martin Zillinger, On Being a Jackal, 2009-2011
  • Anja Dreschke & Martin Zillinger, The Lion-Trance in the City, 2009-2011
  • Martin Zet, Deutschland schafft es ab, 2012
  • David Rych, Key of Return, 2012
  • Konrad Wolf, Der geteilte Himmer, 1963/64
  • Expo:
  • 7th Berlin Biennial, Forget Fear, Berlin/Germany
  • Neue und Alte Nationalgalerie, Gerhard Rchter and others, Berlin/Germany, see pics»
  • [Self-portrait] Email:
  • Ellen Ahbe: ‘You are a good listener, and your movements are so gentle.‘
  • View pictures»


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Weidendammer Brücke, No. 3, Berlin, Germany, 2012

2 weeks ago

Berlin/Germany, Week 18, 2012

[Bridges]

Even before I was writing about bridges as possible symbols of transition or process, the bridge as a communication ‘helper’ is already in one of my video works. In Bonding on the Backseat (from the Series: Words don’t come easy), 4’40, 2011 we see two women on the backseat of a car driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Pop music is playing and they start reacting to the music and mimicking each other. Without verbal language they pick up each other’s ideas to move similarly. One woman is from Brazil and the other woman is from the Netherlands. In this series the theme is language as a form of problematic cultural barrier as well as an empowering instrument. Language as a possibility to express ourselves: our character, thoughts, feelings, and presence.

Cydney M. Payton wrote a fantastic text on Bonding on the Backseat, and in this she in fact already touches on the tourist and the resident as one of the binary messages in the video, which include cultural differences and assimilation; this she values as the video’s main topic of human communication and understanding. In her text she includes Dean MacCannell’s The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, in which the global tourist is always arriving and departing prefigured scenarios. And with the Golden Gate Bridge luring in the back window of the car as a focus of this communication, suggesting joy and vulnerability. According to Payton in relation to this video, MacCannell specifically relates to the way that we build expectations around experience into the “touristic”.

In MacCannell’s epilogue of 1998, he explains that the word “touristic” didn’t appeared in no dictionary, was not an English word and that he resisted to find a substitute for it. Then in 1977 the word entered the English language as an adjective with a negative connotation. In its original use, “touristic” only wanted us to alert that something new had entered the world.
MacCannell’s terms “touristic” as the meeting place of the exchange of human notice and commercial exchange. It is difficult to disconnect the spectacle of international sightseeing from capitalism. The sightseeing aspect of the different bridges in the different countries is free of cost, but the travelling and accommodation is not. The more pictures in the [Bridges] series I will have to show, the more visible the aspect of “movement” will become.  The more “tourist” pictures I have to show, the more it is visible that it is not “home”. And one could maybe wonder what or where is “home’?

Why do tourists have this urge to bring home a picture of their visit? The tourist behavior of “taking” pictures seems to show “the human” who is not at “home” and the picture is proof of this. Marking “other” places shows leaving home and meeting the “other”. Or could it be that it is not about the movement, or the meeting, the experience, but just to have the picture as memory, which serves as evidence of “being” there or serving as status symbol or trophy?  Or serves it a way to connect with the world in our own safe way by a shared experience? Or, that we want to know and show human heritage?
Driven by the desire to experience the unknown or out of pure curiosity, it is a “human” experience, maybe we want to have something new to say, to offer a gift by telling a good story. The Golden Gate Bridge draws 9 million visitors per year, hardly an exclusive one.  But we want to experience it ourselves. Maybe it is not about getting the picture, but the moment of being there, having arrived at the un/known destination and to stand, for example in front of a famous bridge, make a picture and leave again. But what kind of experience is that? Been there, done that? These questions don’t make me wiser, in fact I am a bit lost. Somehow my feeling says that the [Bridges] series therefore should contain also unknown bridges.

Read Payton’s text online: www.kimengelen.com/text/cydney_payton.html


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Bösebrücke No.3, Berlin, Germany, 2012

3 weeks ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 17, 2012

[Bridges] Money
The person in the picture is on bridges in Europe, the US and India, that means this person has been traveling, and this activity costs money. Not alone that but also requires the freedom to move around. It shows someone who has the ability, health and freedom to travel. In fact I could call myself in Western standards a poor artist, but in contrast I am still able to somehow do these things, so not that poor. Could this discrepancy be shown? Are people with this freedom and possibility aware of the many people who cannot? Is this a slap in the face to people who cannot? Or is it just plain boring? I am afraid it is boring? Somehow it is boring to me? Why is it boring? Not the context, not the problems the [Bridges] series addresses, not the travels and the mini events taking place with the (presumably) locals or other tourists taking the pictures and taking part in the artwork. No it is the image, it shows no energy, it is empty to me. Where is the tension? Some are interesting, especially when there are other people around, or people next to me on the picture. But this is something that I don’t want to control (and sometimes cannot). Am I infected myself, and do I feel I need to produce quality? But I really think I don’t want to alter the image (besides of the yellow marker). I don’t want to fiddle with the lighting, with the frame, with the contrast and so on. I (really) want to “take” it as the way it (really) is. Is there something missing? What is it? Is it to static? Could it be the quantity? That [Bridges] needs more pictures, so that it becomes more convincing, more in your face, more clear? Also I need to think more about real, reality, realness and about the alteration (is it only the yellow marker?) And also about the effect of the author/maker of the photograph and the affect that it does (not) have on the image.

Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Lal Qila-, Fort Rouge-, and better known as Red Fort bridge No.1, Agra, India, 2008

3 weeks ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 15, 2012

For a new project called [Self-portrait] I am collecting statements that are made on me by (temporarily) colleges, friends, family and friends/strangers via Facebook. These I am possibly going to publish in a book with pictures made by myself with the iPhone on times during travels or just when I feel like it. This week I got a nice meant reaction from my dear friend Loïs from Rotterdam, see below. Although this project [Self-portrait] is relative new and fresh in my mind and still in progress. I want to write about it now, because it is getting connected by this comment with my [Bridges] series. And that is why this particular reaction occupied my mind and I had to write on it. It is interesting that until now I got no reaction from my not-art friends on my [Bridges] series. This is not typical because sometimes in fact the best reactions come from them. Loïs comments says: “beautiful picture”. And I wondered what makes this picture beautiful to her. I asked her, also because nothing in the picture is really mine. Everything in it is made by someone else or is without of my realm of influence; the architecture, the bridge, the hot weather, the person (me) in the picture and yes even the picture itself. I got a reply back, it is the way I look in the picture. The compliment is addressed to me, it is meant as a compliment, when I am supposedly look beautiful as a woman on the picture. It is a personal comment, that is why I will use it for my series [Self-Portrait]. In my opinion, beauty is a fabrication, and even this fabrication is not really made by me. I as a person (like any other person) can play with it, I guess the way even a Paris Hilton does (consciously or unconsciously). People love and/or hate this fabrication, but are lured by it at the same time. But we all want to see beauty. At the moment I am watching artist collective Gutai and they see beauty in decay. Or “worse” in wounds and dead. Anne Sexton wrote: ‘Is it true that all artists have an obsession with death?’ The more you show beautiful fresh faces or youth, in fact the more death you are showing. And confessions of love, regrets, desires you could call wounds. At least that is my ongoing obsession in my art. An ongoing drive for self-improvement. Anyway looks are very manufacturable, should I mention fashion in general or more specific Cindy Sherman or Lynn Hershman. It was very hot that day in Seville and I wore a blue short trouser-dress with slippers. This makes me think, if I should push this on purpose. And do a naked bridge picture. Would I get a passerby to make a picture of me? Should I strip at the spot, or put my jacket out with no clothes under it? Last weekend I saw a book by Swedish artist Joanna Rytel, in which she does performances for animals or has in Flasher Girl on tour asked a cab driver what he would do if she would start masturbating herself. Okay I am drifting, but what I wanted to say is, that this is a powerful tool that can be used. It is relative of course, it is not completely manufacturable and I also contradict myself that nothing is mine (when I as artist choose the topic, think about it and can stage some elements). But it is on purpose not to wear typical tourist clothes in my [Bridge] series; for example shorts with many pockets and “Jesus” slippers or when it is colder the typical khaki-color jungle pants with hiking boots with the comfy fleece sweater. Of course there are variations, but you know what I am talking about, right? But pushing this more, I have to think about this, how I would deploy this. Or is there a way to override this? To delete fashion completely in the picture. To make it fashion-timeless. One thing is for sure, for the [Self-portrait] series it is just going to be the head, photographed by myself, very consciously chosen moment and no fabrication as much as possibly. So no perfect pictures, certain looks, so called ‘pretty’ faces, but showing the face of a “woman”, or “human”.


Kim Engelen, [Self-portraits] 30-3-12 Malmö/Sweden No.3 TIRED


1 month ago / 1 note

Malmö/Sweden, Week 14, 2012 

I have a number, I am not a number
I have a lover, I am not his possession
I have a country, I am not its prisoner
You have your rules, we have to obey
You have your ethics, we have to learn
You have your borders, we have to try
We have our freedom, they want to lock down
We have our family, they want to intervene
We have our lives, they want to control


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Øresund Bridge No. 1, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012

1 month ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 13, 2012

In Ywe Jalanders film on Alvar Aalto, it says that he always approached things from the human point out, not from the intellectual point in. I admire that, although it contrast for me with him for not letting his daughter choose her own profession. She wanted to become a nurse or something ‘good’ but it was not academic enough for him. I don’t think that any person is better then any other person because of the more developed brain (or should I say trained), bigger mouth, power, amount of money or what not. But ethics do form a problem for me to contribute to this thought myself and not also become the judging person. Perhaps all my work is not about communication between people and the happiness and problems that it can bring. But about ethics and moral, and how to deal with this, and how we all equal human beings differ in this immensely. Does law or religion really help us with this? Democracy or consensus? How come that being an intellectual is ‘better’ then being a nurse or a teacher. This confuses me.

A lot of the times in my art I just take risks and try things intuitively. I would say my project [Bridges] like many of my projects is social, but does not produce real social consequences I imagine. Because really how could a person standing in front of a bridge, directly alter our look upon immigration problems and/or ethics, power structures, communication, authorship and personal development? And what would I want to change anyway? In fact my own view on immigration and power structures changes with every news article I read on it, joined with my until now three personal experience as an artist immigrant and now two times as an art-student immigrant. Besides all the complications I am aware that I am in the fortunate position to ‘voluntarily’ go abroad to study and that the Swedish system pays for my education. And this with the advantage that students are the group of immigrants which are according to statistics are the most tolerated group of legal immigrants. Having an effect implies some kind of power, which my art doesn’t have and maybe want, because it comes with responsibility. And as an artist I just want to express, flow, maybe expose, maybe define by researching myself, slowly, scattered, intuitively, imagining or working from a sort of premonition, stubbornly (perhaps) going in the wrong direction. But then deep down I do feel that art can create a shift, because by exposing these fragments of reality. I think people could become more aware of immigration in my project [Bridges], and that could work as a shift-gear into another level of approaching the subject and thus then dealing with it in real life when encountering ‘others’.

Jimmie Durham’s Lecture: Cowboys and the São Paulo Biennial for example changed my vision for good on cowboys. The process of knowledge on how ‘Americans’ took the land away from the Mexicans was already on the way, but he gave that final push. Interestingly now North America forbids Mexicans to cross the border. In fact it is stolen land. But in fact on fact it is really nobodies land. It is our common globe; earth. Or not? On my other blog Immigration-Open up borders I collect news-items, and almost everyday there is something in the news concerning immigration. Somehow I think it is crazy that a living being hasn’t got the freedom to go anyplace s/he likes. I am ‘lucky’ and I can move with my European passport relatively freely, my boyfriend with his passport nowhere, only as a tourist. For a while he was illegal and I went with him through all the bureaucratic and emotional straining voyage.

The border issue I find most complicated. I state Open up Borders. But do I really feel like that? If the whole world would be border less, could that work? What are the ‘rules’ for that, or ‘courtesies’? The word courtesies audibly sound nice together with securities. How about tribes, or nomads, where is the border there? Is it still the land, or the people who stick together and call themselves a tribe? My tribe would be being from the ‘westerling’ tribe. So that makes me aware of individualism. If I think of a person with his/her private borders. Westerlings with a garden have border-problems with their gardens. They say: ‘If you don’t watch your border, you ‘let’ the other make advantage of this. And if you don’t watch out in the end they will sit with their chair in your garden’. Norman McLaren comically shows a lot in his animation Neighbors, where live actors as stop-motion objects make war over a flower that blooms between their houses. Personally I do have a problem with authority, I really don’t like it if another person tells me what I MUST do. Immigration comes with bureaucracy and a lots of MUSTS. Could we approach immigration like that? The problem makers screw it up for the others. But aren’t we all sometimes a problem maker. Like Alvart Aalto’s approach I want this art piece to be in the root a joint creation, I don’t want to be a dictator. But mostly I do have the control and do control how the piece looks like in the end. When I ask you: ‘Could you make a picture of me?’ You can of course always just say no. But if you take the picture, I take it as how it is; the framing, the lighting, the the distance. I am not going to Photoshop it, or color correct it. Thank you. So could I pluck bridge-pictures of the internet? No. Because there has to be a person in front or on it and it should be the same person on all the pictures, passing through time it is the same person.

The picture is tooled do, I have printed the color picture in black in white, in the original size of 10x15 cm (4x6 inch) and thén marked the bridge yellow with a marker. This I then scanned and blew up to A2 size (leaving the dpi on 300). The picture gets more pixelated and looks more cheaper, second hand, something of not so much value and makes a reference to the look of a newspaper, because of the black and white print quality and the yellow marker relating to office material. I have to do the yellow marking of the bridge before I finally print it again in the A2 size. Why? Why don’t I mark it after the final print? The marking gets done in the original size and is the first ‘marking’ of a signifier. Also I don’t want to make it crafty-looking. There is no reference to painting, if there is a reference to an (art)medium then it is to photograph, video and performance. Something moving, changing, developing or slipping. The news, current news, old news, the blog, the information, the picture, the digital age, my previous experience with video makes me choose for this sequence and thus this outcome. Research, pre-production, production, post-production and distribution. It is relatively the same process.

Also the final print is going to be on aluminum or plexiglass. For now I choose for aluminum, it has the connotation of bridge material and there is a little coldness in the material which is what I am looking for. A black and white photo on a grey surface, because it is not a cheery tourist photo. Also it has a slightly mirroring effect, I don’t know if this will be working out. But this could make the viewer, become more integrated in the work by the slightly mirroring reflection. The yellow could be the one positive attribute to the black and white, little bit pixelated photograph. It reference to something positive, which is the bridge. The symbol of connection, of going from A to B en reverse, movement, contact, continuity. The work shows the single person, but is not necessarily about the identity of one single person, or a particular person and I think because of the pixelation the face is not that exactly visual, so there comes a bit more distance to the particular person in the picture. But it is still recognizable the same person in the picture, which is necessary. It is important to see the same person in the pictures on the different bridges, in the different locations/cities/countries. As soon the series grows this will be more clear, I think. Also the ‘growing’ of the art-piece as installation needs time and money, since I need to travel to these bridges and the person in the picture will age. I don’t expect that you will see that the person is aging that much because of the pixelation, but time will tell.

The A2 plates will be probably placed on the floor, I am going to make a mock up of this with A2 prints coming week. The placement is low so the viewer can look down on them, or has to squat down the knees to make an effort to see the pictures more closely, the worthless tourist pictures. Which become because of the transformation worthy. Do these trophies reminisce some form of individual or family post-colonial gene? I don’t want to treat the plates as objects and certainly not as sculptures. They should remain pictures, because I feel it is about social human issues and in reality not about the bridge. The bridge is just a symbol, a method, a ‘bridge’ to the topic, but I think it will be good if the plates are placed on the floor in a slight angle. Almost if they were placed there temporarily, to be re-placed later or corrected an other time. Also the aluminum and the bridge create a link, not that all the bridges on the pictures relate to the same material of the aluminum plates but the combination of the material and the placing, the pictures too become three dimensional because they are not hung, but placed on the floor, loose from the wall only connecting by supporting. Which is what the bridge in essence is; a helping and supporting structure.


Peter Bruegel de Oude, The Tower of Babel, 1563, oil on panel, 60 x 74.5 cm, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, © Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

1 month ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 12, 2012

Last week I went to the Malmö Konstmuseum and I saw Carl Fredrik Hill’s: Trädet och flodkröken III (Bois-le-Roi). And I thought to myself how nice if you are a painter. You choose (in this case) a viewpoint of a landscape that you like and start to paint it. Your gaze lasts on and on, on the your self chosen vista. Later I heard that Hills had also periods of illness in his head. And then while I was pondering on looking while looking to the painting while I was having this particular thought, my gaze was drawn to the bridge in the painting. Back ‘home’ when I entered bridge Bois-le-Roi in Google the first hit I got was a Youtube video where two people jump of a Bois-le-Roi bridge. It seems people like to jump of constructions for one reason or another. Thinking on jumping, I think of the Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader who jumped of a house, who jumped of a chair, who jumped from a tree into a pond. (I wouldn’t call it falling, because he made sure that he would lose from gravity). So we have fun jumps, art jumps and suicide jumps.

Back to the bridge on Hill’s painting. It must be the Pont de Chartrettes. So I Google now Pont de Chartrettes, and what is this, the first hit again is a video of people jumping of a bridge. Alas we know fun-jumps do go wrong, and also suicide jump go wrong. And wrong in this final sense is perhaps right. Direction, more or less horizontal as long as you are on the bridge, and you can go back and forth, there is the possibility of return. There is some form of stability in it. The movement comes from-out the person. The in form vertical jump is also movement, however once in the air there is nothing much to do, the fall is then inevitable forced by gravity.

The second ‘hit’ on Google, is a dailymotion vid also showing a fun bridge jump, but then showing the viewpoint of the bridge. Thus the person on top of the bridge while jumping of the bridge. Again I think of Erin Langworthy, who bungee jumped 111 meters into Zambezi River at Victoria Falls after her cord snapped. She survived this fun-jump. Then I think of what I read on Wikipedia; more people die by suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge than at any other site in the world. At this moment it is no.1 most-popular place to commit suicide in the world. Sara Rutledge Birnbaum, jumped of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and also survived. She went back on the bridge and jumped again. The bridge is lifeless, the route where it is designed for we know, it is a recognizable pad that you can take. The bridge is for better or worse stable and supporting. People can choose not to ‘use’ a bridge for what is was designed, but to ‘use’ it differently. The bridge an inanimate thing in itself, and in either way it still remains a helping construction by the them self chosen ‘direction’.


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Beam Bridge No. 2, Area Ørestad, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012

2 months ago / 2 notes

Malmö/Sweden, Week 11, 2012

[Bridges] Part VIII
Bridges are often overlooked because they seem so obvious in our landscape. So are the tourists making pictures in our (urban) landscape. We see them, but we don’t really see them. Bridges as well people who use the bridges, link areas and countries. The earliest history of bridges goes back to the India of the 3th and 4th century. In epic literature is being told how Rama’s army build mythical bridges that stretches from India until Sri Lanka. But the oldest still existing bridges are being build by the Romans. Their aqueducts and arch bridges nowadays still exist. The materials used to build bridges have changed over the centuries and in the 19th century through the industrial revolution the amount of bridges increased drastically. The diversity of materials used for Bridges; stone, brick, wood, metal, concrete are as diverse as the people who cross Bridges. Bridges where usually functional, but in modern times bridges became a way to influence the landscape by their aesthetics and they became icons of cities and therefore attractions for tourists.


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Plaza de España Bridge No. 2, Seville, Spain, 2010

2 months ago / 2 notes

Malmö/Sweden, Week 10, 2012

[Bridges] Part VII
This week I went back again to Malmö from the Netherlands. Since I was staying in the south of the Netherlands I needed to take the train for two hours to Schiphol, the Dutch Airport. Just past Eindhoven we got a message that there was a fire alert in the tunnel and the train drove us back to Eindhoven. There was no way to get to Schiphol by train without passing this tunnel. NS, the Dutch Railways, provided a taxi for two other passengers and me from Eindhoven to Schiphol airport. This was fantastic, firstly that the NS arranged a taxi for people who had to catch their plain and double because I got to see many many many bridges.

AND surprisingly, many of the viaducts that we went though had a fluorescent yellow transparent safety-band next to them instead of the gray metal bridge railings that are so common in my head for Dutch viaducts. I felt an aha-moment and instantly understood my black and white prints with the yellow marked bridges. Before I thought that I purely used the yellow marker to emphasize the bridge, and because of the simple fact that I nowadays use the yellow marker a lot. But it seems there is more to this; my subconscious had picked up the yellow outline of the bridges from real life bridges in the Netherlands where I am originally from. This gives me a boost that I should stick for now to my black and white printouts and marking the bridge with a yellow marker. That this came to me while traveling back to my (temporarily) new home country makes completely sense to me now. It is not intuitive anymore, and the meaning is correct. Because I am a mini-immigrating myself and taking not just tulips but also yellow bridge railings with me to my host country and process these elements into my work [Bridges].


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Malmö Konstmuseum Castle Bridge No. 2, Malmö, Sweden, 2012

2 months ago

Netherlands, Week 9, 2012

[Bridges] Part VI
My [Bridge] pictures are cooperation with the factual authors who remain anonymous, they are the participants and authors, and I become the participant and the spectator.

What should I call this, a performance, situation, action, event, a game, or better a happening? Maybe I should deconstruct or personalize the meaning to these words for myself to see which one fits best. Performance; I don’t consider it a performance, since the action is not presented to an (art) audience. Although the passerby’s are witnesses, but then they are completely oblivious that they are witnessing something art instead of a tourist-action. Situation; Yes, but what does this say. No, when I think of a situation, I think of something negative, which it is not, at the moment of making it is a beautiful voluntary art-supporting action. Action; Yes, also, but what does it say. Action, does come close, there is something going on, and also the movie-director says action. Event, no, that is too big. It is something small almost invisible, something personal, yes maybe even intimate, but in the public sphere, people just pass by, maybe here and there someone watches, which makes the picture possibly even more interesting. Is it then more a game? That comes close, but a game usually has a loser and a winner. And I am not aiming for that. But the game is happening indeed with the person who makes the pictures. He/she is in control, but still I control a lot. I more or less control the framing, because I choose the moment where I ask the ‘photographer’ to make a picture of me, and I choose where I am going to stand. I can control what I am wearing and more or less how I look. But how he/she does make the picture, angle, height and the timing is out of my control and the framing is not the way I would choose it when I hold the camera myself. And a game you play with each other, which we at that particular moment are doing. But in this case the ‘photographer’ thinks he/she shoots a picture for a tourist and therefor I cheat. Because I am not on a holiday I am working. So I cheat because in fact he/she is playing a different game then what he thinks he/she is playing. But happening comes close too, because the cooperation with the photographer is a key element. Wiki: ‘A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere (from basements to studio lofts and even street alley ways), are often multidisciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience. Key elements of happenings are planned, but artists sometimes retain room for improvisation. This new media art aspect to happenings eliminates the boundary between the artwork and its viewer. Henceforth, the interactions between the audience and the artwork makes the audience, in a sense, part of the art.’ But maybe the naming itself of this element of the ‘work’ is not so important and I can choose or even misuse by choosing which name I give it in relation to the henceforth meaning.
The role of the temporal ‘photographer’ or ‘author’ or ‘participant’ has an important role in the work. In fact a crucial role, without this ‘action’, the work could not exist and would possibly remain a tourist holiday ‘kiekje’ photograph.


John Baldesari,Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, 1972

2 months ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 8, 2012

[Bridges] Part V
This week I keep on thinking of the photograph ‘Untitled, 1972’ by Larry Clark, on it he is injecting heroine in his girlfriends arm. And at the same time I have a 80’s song from Human League in my head, and during transcendental meditation I keep pondering about this songs lyrics ‘I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, that much is true ….’ 
‘Untitled, 1972’ touches me so deeply. Why? There is an incredible intimacy in the picture to me. But it is not, you know someone else took that picture, so they where not alone. Similar to the ‘people’ photographs which Nan Goldin shoots. They have this intense vulnerability in them, I find it immensely moving. And they way they have been shot, it feels as if you as a viewer are there. Which can not be, but it is. The picture is there, as if the photographer was not there. Isn’t it Larry Clark himself in ‘Untitled, 1972’? I think it is him ‘in’ the picture. Back to the song, the different voices, the different viewpoints coming into one are interesting. In my [Bridges] photographs I want to think about the person who shoots me standing on or in front of a bridge. He/she is not visible, but he/she shoots the picture. He/she is immense important, he/she is not in the picture. He/she is the only witness, because there is the picture, the evidence of the action, or performance, or happening. I think I remember that that is the first and only time he went into jail because he injected the heroin into someone else body and this was the evidence of it.
It is still tangled, I take my decision firstly intuitive, and now I need more time to think about this presence vs absence or all together, and integration, assimilation. But also evidence of the tourist vs. passerby’s. Author, producer, participant, viewer.


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] De Hogesluis (Bridge No. 246) No. 9, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2012

2 months ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 7, 2012

[Bridges] Part IV
What does the bridge symbolizes and why does the bridge matter?
Wikipedia tells there 6 main types of bridges; beam bridges, cantilever bridges, arch bridges, suspension bridges, cable-stayed bridges and truss bridges. Structurae, the International Database and Gallery of Structures), tells us that there are thirteen undefined bridge types:

  1. Arch bridge
  2. Cable-net bridge
  3. Cable-stayed bridge
  4. Covered bridge
  5. Girder bridge
  6. Hyperbolic paraboloid bridge
  7. Movable bridge (sometimes referred to as bascule or drawbridge)
  8. Pontoon bridge
  9. Rigid frame bridge
  10. Stressed ribbon bridge
  11. Suspension bridge
  12. Trestle bridge
  13. Truss bridge (or traffic bridge)

I don’t know if this categorization is important to me, I am not an civil engineering or architect nor builder, I am an artist with unfortunately a bad memory. But for now I want to go with the flow of research so to speak and see what these groupings might reveal or lead me to. In my current series I have the following bridges from these 13 bridge types;
No. 3 The Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam is a cable stayed bridge. I lived here for almost 6 years and although I am living in Sweden now, I am registered in Rotterdam.
No. 7 The London Gate Bridge is a combined bascule and suspension bridge. We went to London with school in February to have the seminar: Cultural Translation in the Age of the global Assembly Line with Sarat Maharaj.
No. 11 The Älvsborg Bridge in Gothenburg and The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco are suspension bridges. In San Francisco I have lived up to 5 months when I studied one semester at the California College of the Arts (unfortunately I had to quit because of money issues).
No. 13 The John F. Kennedy Bridge in Maastricht is a truss bridge (or traffic bridge). I went to school for 1 year in Maastricht. In the soundtrack: Memory evoked by the John F. Kennedy Bridge in Maastricht, 3’06” I address this, see/hear online [Bridges] Four soundtracks/compilation 2012»
So when I look at the list of 13 bridge types, I have at the moment 4 types, watch pics online»

Let’s have a look at the other ones.
No. 1 an Arch Bridge. I go to Wikipedia and the very first picture that strikes me is the Aqueduct of Segovia (or more precisely, The Aqueduct Bridge). This is a surprise, I lived in Segovia for almost one year. So I went through my pictures to find out if I have no picture of me in front of this Arch bridge. What I do have are several video recordings of my walking route to the local immigration help center to enjoy free Spanish classes. So I have recordings of me walking under The Aqueduct Bridge. These could become recordings that I am going to use, but not for the photo series, because the recordings are pointing outwards of myself. So there is something else going on here as well. I get back to this later, it seems also that as a tourist you take pictures of your travel companion or your self in front of tourist attractions. But if you are a resident you don’t. Cydney Payton wrote a fantastic text on my work ‘Bonding on the Backseat’, where she already touches on the tourist and the resident. Read online»


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] Lal Qila-, Fort Rouge-, and better known as Red Fort bridge No.1, Agra, India, 2008

3 months ago / 1 note

Malmö/Sweden, Week 6, 2012

[Bridges] Part III
Question to myself, what does the bridge stands for and why does the bridge matter? The dictionary tells me; a structure carrying a road, path, railroad, or canal across a river, ravine, road, railroad, or other obstacle. Thus a bridge is structure that you can cross over to the other side, which helps you over the obstacle what ever that might me. Of course you can also choose not to cross the bridge but to jump from it. I have to think of a movie scene where the young boys jump of their little town bridge into the water in a sparkling sunny summer. Because of gravity you will most probably fall downwards. Unlikely such as an elevator that takes you either up or down, the bridge itself does not move you. You have to move yourself or your vessel over the bridge to move over the bridge. Could we say that the bridge is a passive object? It can bring you closer to your destination, your goal, your desire, your end station, or towards a person you love living on the other side. But that still does not answer the question. What does it symbolizes and why does the bridge matter? The bridge could be part of an element of joy, people can jump of the bridge for joy i.e. bungee jumping, which can go wrong or wrong and then right such as in the case of Erin Langworthy, who bungee jumped 111 meters into Zambezi River at Victoria Falls after her cord snapped. She survived the fun-jump. But there are also suicide jumps, with the intention to end once own life of suffering. Could we say the bridge has this dual element already built in itself? In a time of peace it is mostly an overlooked ‘object’. On the contrary in a time of war, then it can  become a strategic element in warfare. The bridge leads to somewhere, from here to there. From left to right and back. From this life into another altered life. From live to death? But in normal day living? It could be just that particular structure that happens to be there in the city where you live and that you have to cross over. I think of the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam. If you live in the south part and you work or study in the center then you might ‘take’ the Ben van Berkel designed bridge on a daily basis. The bridge is nicknamed “The Swan”. Is it because of its shape or because the fact that you cross the river the Nieuwe Maas (English: New Meuse) on a cable stayed bridge which under strong wind conditions moves. By the way don’t you just love these words; move, maas, meuse.
In any case the bridge is a ‘helper’ structure. Sometimes it is also a sightseeing structure. So in any sense it is a ‘helper’ structure, for better or worst. But still where does it stand for. The Old Man at the Bridge is one of Hemingway’s shortest tales. It is based upon an Easter Sunday stopover at the Ebro River during his coverage of the Spanish Civil War in April 1938. For me the bridge symbolizes transition, and in this short story the old man is to tired to cross the bridge. That he does not come along with the refugees means that he stays and that when the enemy comes most probably his life ends. But one could also live under the bridge. A song that reminds me of addiction and death in relation to a LA bridge, is Under The Bridge from the Red Hot Chili Peppers;
Under the bridge downtown
Is where I drew some blood
Under the bridge “
I could not get enough
Under the bridge “
Forgot about my love
Under the bridge “
In this sense the bridge to me symbolizes not only a transition but also a process. The process of going through a hard time. Or using hard drugs to get through difficulties. So going from one state into another state. I think this duality has to get into my work somehow. I have to accent this. How? Should I maybe continue to use black and white. As the only two ‘colors’ that makes by this choice perhaps a contrast? Or is there a different way to show process, transition, duality, the bridge as passive but helpful structure? I marked the bridge yellow intuitive with a marker. Maybe this makes sense. It does make me think of the Øresund or Öresund Bridge (depending which side you are on). The bridge connects Denmark and Sweden, and it is the longest road and rail bridge in Europe. And this takes me back to communication and language. Two countries connected by the bridge. Two language, related but different. A refugee fleeing to a different country which is sometimes the same country that in fact created somehow the war in their root country, but also exhange students who have the choice to learn the language of their temporarily host country.


Kim Engelen, [Bridges] The Alvsborgsbron bridge No. 4, Gothenborg, Sweden, 2011

3 months ago

Malmö/Sweden, Week 5, 2012

[Bridges] Part II
Question to myself, should I put the round mirror sticker on the face?
No; the mystery part does not work for me. I don’t want to put a mirror on the head, because it should be anything but revealing. The more close-up and open, the more intimate and personal and thus stronger and better it becomes in my opinion. This; affecting, individual, private, connection->communication difficulties->language, emotional is the strength of my work; I cannot and will not put this aside. So I tried to put the mirror in the head, in different shapes, in different pictures, in different places but it does not work. Also changing the size and form of the mirrors and image does not change the fact that still the face with a mirror on top becomes a mask. Also the extra element I find distracting. The spectator does become participant and that is good. But because of this somebody gets lost and nobody should get lost, neither the original maker, me. So what then? I think I should go back to the natural form of the picture, thus that is does get the feeling of a holiday snapshot. I like that, that is personal. Most people can relate to that, I think. It is pure and simple. That should stay and therefore color should then get back into the image. It gives more juice, more atmosphere tot these photos, it makes a difference when it is a grayish bridge picture made in London or a sun-flooded picture made on an Indian bridge in Agra. What I should do is have more, more more bridges, places, pictures.
But still what to do with the spectator? I want to have this triangle in order. Maybe I should not worry about the spectator as one of my peers said and just focus on the image. The fact that I ask someone else to make a picture of me is already a big step. I have no control over the making of the image; I cannot look at the framing, moving elements if any, how the portrayed person looks or acts, facial expressions and other time related unique details from being there on that particular time on that particular place. When I write facial expressions I wonder what in the world was I thinking to put a mirror on the head? The most interesting visual part of a person to me is the face. Here everything happens, here is the mind located, the eyes leading inwards to the soul, the mouth that makes us capable of speaking with each other. The mirror is definitely off. Maybe I could hold a mirror in my hand and then later put a real mirror on this part, so that the viewer can still look into this and seem themselves. But then the idea of having the viewer becoming partly the creator is lost. And also it sounds like a trick, I don’t like tricks, I want reality. Maybe it is enough to have a passerby, a stranger, a voluntary momentarily participant have an extreme short performance with me, when he/she makes the picture of me. Maybe that is enough for now. So that I can move on with thinking about the bridge and what it symbolizes and why it matters.

image
Kim Engelen, [Bridges] John F. Kennedybrug No. 3, Maastricht, The Netherlands, 2012

3 months ago / 1 note
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