The Fortune door PolakVanBekkum
Over het werk
1920 x 1080
Video-animatie
The bell rings, the music starts. A merry-go-round begins to move, and we’re in it. It takes us on a bumpy rotating ride on a December morning. A view of a cheerful but ominous landscape unfolds.
We hear the characteristic fairground music, a combination of the found footage sounds Merry Go Round by Gary Edstrom and Caroussel Honfleur by Julien Nicholas. The sounds merge into a ‘distress call,’ a telephone conversation between a refugee boat and the Coast Guard, as broadcasted online by BBC News in 2016 under the title What a migrant distress call sounds like.
Meanwhile, our gaze circles Google Earth. It is December 5, 9:41:45 in the Google Earth morning. We stand behind the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security in the Google Earth-The Hague on the Google Earth Malie-Field: a much-used party ánd protest arena. The sun is just rising. The local fairground is still set up, frozen in time. Black cubes appear in the sky. The meaning of the cubes is up to the viewer.
The Fortune deliberately draws a fog curtain, making it unclear who is fortunate and unfortunate. The Fortune is an expression of impotence, of artists, of the limitless and bounded, of a digital world, freedom, and joy.
The Fortune was created for The One Minutes, curated by Quinsy Gario, with the theme Public Justice and was inspired by Kiza Magendane’s opinion article in NRC of December 2, 2017: Our conscience must not stop at the border (‘Ons geweten mag niet stoppen bij de grens’).
Over de maker
PolakVanBekkum explores choreographies of daily life: walking, cycling, driving, flying, wandering. In their view, the drive to move creates a world or space, rather than taking place in an already existing one. Rooted in the history of the Dutch realistic landscape depiction, they express personal experiences of moving and space. Their projects are often informed by collaborations with participants, be it humans, animals, or even the rays of the sun.
Recent werk van PolakVanBekkum: Het Geluid Vaart; sound art and podcast (2020-2022) als onderdeel van OEROL; boek-publicatie Graaschoreografieën (2020); Solo expositie Op Drift bij De Waag Deventer (2021); Lost on Arrival, short film op IDFA (2020). The Fortune is de inzending van PolakVanBekkum voor de Open Call EXODUS van het Bijbels Museum en Buitenplaats Doornburgh.
