Een Vergeten Geschiedenis
In the work Een Vergeten Geschiedenis (A Forgotten History), I tested 20 people. The test consisted of listening to the story of Noah's ark. Immediately after the story ended I've asked the subjects to retell the story as accurately as possible. What happened was that the stories were considerably shorter. Details that did not interested the subject were forgotten and there was information made up. Ultimately, the core of the story remained. The story was distilled from its surplus details and deformations. This distillation, I used to work with. These fragments, which are removed from their original context, form an anti-story.
At first sight the 24 scenes are seemingly unrelated to each other. By bringing them together in one place, the scenes relate to each other. The place where the images come together is a large filing cabinet full of files. Behind these files, this anti-story is projected on a projectionscreen . The files all bear a sign on their backs. A + or -. This sign corresponds to the forgotten facts (for example: there were dark clouds in the sky) and the distorted/added (for example: Noah is married). These sentences are put in the files and correspond with the film where they stand before. The spectator has the possibility to remove a file from the cabinet and read the sentence. This action is not necessary because the files are arranged in a way that the movies are always visible.
Compilation of movies from the installation (45")
Een Vergeten Geschiedenis: Installation view