Contour

“Contour” is a kinetic light installation that reconstructs the mental spaces of film environments. It cuts spatiality out of a steel plate, which is rotated until it becomes a revolving space, which comes to life when highlighted.
It is an interdisciplinary translation between architecture and film, by focusing on the phenomenology of perception and persistence. These help us with the interpretation and processing of visual stimuli. A cinematic environment is experienced and interpreted. “Contour” creates the mental reconstructions and representations from “Russian Ark”, a cinematic experience of Alexander Sokurov.

In this film, a single continuous shot connects the entire story line through the halls and corridors of the Hermitage in St Petersburg.
We, the audience, follow the perspective of the camera on its path through the interior spaces of time.
Architecture is the connecting path between the moment and the experiences. Architecture places them on a time axis. Architecture here is the trail, the framework on which moments are built, the screen on which moments are projected.

The viewer follows the path and perspective of the camera, in confrontation with the architectural environment. The viewer takes the position, follows the trajectory of the moments, follows the position in the space. The camera has a position, a direction and a trajectory. It does not look back, it does not hide what lies behind the viewing direction. This forces us as a viewer to make a mental image of the total, a representation of reality that gives us a sense of overview and coherence. A mental image as an interpretation of spatiality, which interpolates over the cinematic shadow of the dark and invisible side of the camera.

Just like archaeologists, who reconstruct the whole through the juxtaposition of the fragments of the past, we interpolate as a viewer of the camera images into a sense of uncluttered spatiality.

“Contour” is an attempt to translate the experienced spaces into a reconstructed environment, on the edge between architecture (the model) and film (the ephemeral).