Vergeet niet te vergeten • Commission permanent sculpture
BKKC (Brabants ART and Knowledge Centre) invited me to take part in a commissioned project called
Uitgeschreven ruimte (Written out space). Seven artists were linked to seven writers/poets, in order to create
textual artworks for different public spaces. Public textual artworks usually lack creativity in form and shape.
BKKC asked: what happens if these two worlds get connected? Something other than a plain text on a wall must
come out, right?
The BKKC’s staircase was given to me as location to create an artwork. I was immediately inspired by the
vertical movement of the people using the stairs. With that in mind, I came up with a concept that eventually
lead to a new self-invented optical illusion. The illusion allows an image to change based on the altering
perspective of a person walking up or down in relation to the object. We pushed through in the technical design
and eventually discovered it was possible to imply a maximum of four image changes in one single object.
After this was achieved, Belgian poet Peter Verhelst, for his part, wrote a four-line poem :
Vergeet, Vergeet niet, Vergeet niet te vergeten, V rg t n (Forget, Do not forget, Do not forget to forget, F rg tt n.
The object (upper right image) holds these four lines of text but you can see only one at a time. The first line
(1) disappears and blends into the second line (2) when you start walking down from point A to B (see image
below). Then the second line disappears and blends into the third line (3). Finally the third line disappears and
blends into the last line (4).
ICW: Mark van Cromvoirt and Peter Verhelst

Vergeet niet te vergeten BKKC

Vergeet niet te vergeten

Steel framework

Detail framework (3mm Lasercut Steel)

Graphic content taping

Graphic content taping and painting

Graphic content painting