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You Are Here

Site specific installation for Base Camp, part of Tou Camp - a month long happening at Tou Scene, Stavanger. 2011

This part of the old brewery buildings at Tou has always been used as offices, first for the Tou Brewery and more recently for companies renting the space. When we gained access to the space, many interesting features and furniture remained, hinting at the previous occupants.

I was particularily interested a separate office with two windows looking out at the buildings and fjord outside Tou Scene. Working in the space and finding an old drawing table and filing cabinet were the starting points for this site-specific installation.

The whole space is made over to a pseudo camera obscura, created with inverted photographs of the view from the windows, mounted on the opposite wall. The windows are representated on the back wall at a scale of 1:2.


  

The centre point of the space is marked with a red spot on the floor and the words: "You are here". This refers to tourist maps and thereforeto travel and foreigness. The statement is an affirmation of presence, as opposed to the state of absence or non-place described by Marc Augere, which many of us now experience daily, through vicarious travelling and living, via the internet.





  
The third element of the installation is a scale model of the space at scale 1:20, in a filing cabinet draw. The model features photographs of the doors and windows in the space. In one of the windows, I am included in the photograph. My back is turned to the camera. I am looking out towards the fjord, mimicking the pose of Gerhard Richter's "Betty".


  
A scale model kit was available to take away at the exhibition. This single A4 sheet can be folded to recreate a scale model of the space, that includes the photographs of the windows, self-portrait and doors. This is available to you here as a downloadable pdf for you to print out and make up.