PROPOSAL Nr 17, 2007
Site specific
160x110x60cm _ polyester/cement

DISLOCATIONS
Trinity Site, the American monument for the first ever atomic bomb tests has been carefully rebuilt in plaster and placed in a suburb of Ghent. A starving child from Ethiopia is cast in bronze and shows up in down town Madrid. Tourists like to have their picture taken in front of the touching sculpture with a compassionate look in their eyes. A polyester copy of the Vietnamese girl Kim Phuk stands for a while in a suburb of Hoorn before moving on to various locations throughout Gdansk. Another scale model of an atomic explosion cast in bronze is placed on a green in front of a block of 70’s flats in Haarlem.

The reactions by people living in the area and coincidental passers by to the dislocations are strikingly diverse. Some take pity on the naked Vietnamese girl by dressing her in cloths for the cold winter nights. Others just wonder; where have I seen this before? Some people are incensed by the sculpture, in others it summons up anger, why now? Why here? What gives the artist the right to confront me with this on my own doorstep? Exactly the same images that are haphazardly thrust into our living rooms (the personal domain) through the television set seem to be experienced as less invasive.

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