SIGHTLINE
A site-specific work at H401, Amsterdam, 2014
An installation in the old hiding place at Castrum Peregrini. The red lines depict the lines of vision from the street into the apartment. The six people hiding there during World War II had to stay below these lines – all day, every day, for three years – in order to keep from being seen.
The work consists of this site-specific installation and an improvisational performance with Oene van Geel (viola), Kenzo Kusuda (dancer) and Lars Ebert (vocals), edited to a 6.21 min. video in which I referred to the emotional, physical, and mental representation of a human being, caught in a situation like this.
The triangular building’s three walls, with their low windows, formed the framework in which I retraced the lines of vision that shaped the lives of this people.
Six men and women lived together in this small apartment during World War II: Two of them ‘free,’ the others Jewish. Their physical boundaries where tightly circumscribed, but together they managed to create an emotional and mental freedom that was bigger than the ‘outside world’ could have ever imagined at that time.
