ALONG DOTTED LINES
(2025)
2 Weeks Residency at Emerging Exits
Department Design Art Technology (ArtEZ University of Arts)
Collaboartin with Sjoerd Willemsen and Inessa Perk
Phasing in and out in the land and history, the mask of the Diogenes Bunker vanishes and reveals itself as material witness of past tales and future stories. The meaning and function of the bunker is constantly reconstructed and deciphered in a loop, receiving, transferring and archiving information, but how does the bunker embody this morphological shift? What lies within its imprinted cold concrete? What has remained stuck, hidden, embedded and what shimmers still decoded?
The Diogenes Bunker was one of the largest WWII bunkers in the Netherlands and mainly used for information transfer to coordinate aerial defence. After that, the bunker was used as a national archive, giving its thick walls a new meaning, purpose and story.
The Diogenes Bunker was one of the largest WWII bunkers in the Netherlands and mainly used for information transfer to coordinate aerial defence. After that, the bunker was used as a national archive, giving its thick walls a new meaning, purpose and story.
Along Dotted Lines is a two-channel audio-visual installation inviting the audience to explore and imagine the bunkers narration by listing to its speculative soundscape and emerging themselves into the haunted layers of the bunker of the present. Based on field recordings made during our two-weeks residency with the Department Design Art Technology from ArtEZ University of Arts at Emerging Exits, we created a two-channel video that visualizes the same space in two distinct temporal modes reflecting on the morphological shift of the building. The video is projected onto several layers of PVC folie embedded with Morse code. These hang in one of the command rooms reflecting on the actions of the “Blitzmädel” as they pointed out the next target acting as gigantic windows, as the portal between inside and outside. As visitors move freely through the exhibition space, they become part of the experience by creating shadows and ghostly images behind these decoded “maps”. Speakers were installed in the bunker’s walls so that visitors could literally begin to listen to the stories of the haunted building that have been recorded over time.
Humans have filled the bunker with their stories and information.
In this project, the Diogenes Bunker reveals these tales as an independent entity.