Beijerkoppen
The public artwork in this multi-cultural area of the city transforms the three enormous concrete frames in the building front into a living portrait gallery.
The portraits, news readers from television news programs from stations from all over the world and collected by a searching machine, appear in classical portrait-composition in a continuous stream on LED-video screens.
Depending on the duration of the newsreaders presence in the item, one fragment fades into a fragment from another station. Because of this, and also because of the different lengths of the fragments on the three displays, an irregular, smooth changing of images is created.
Passersby can hear the sound of the news fragments from small loudspeakers.
year | 2012 |
location | Bijerlandselaan Rotterdam-Zuid |
curator | Rotterdam Arts Council |
photography | Hans Wilschut |
further information | Beijerkoppen is a public space artwork in Rotterdam by Toine Horvers and Paul Cox that was commissioned by CBK Rotterdam and executed by V2_lab. The artwork is situated alongside the Beijerlandselaan in the Hillesluis area of Rotterdam.
situation and background
De Zwarte Hond architects designed a new building on the Beijerlandselaan in Rotterdam-South. Besides apartments, the building houses a branch of the electronica company Mediamarkt.
In the blind wall on the Beijerlandselaan there are three large concrete frames which present an opportunity for the placing of an artwork that will make a connection with the multicultural character of the neighborhood.
artwork
The artists - who immediately saw a portrait gallery in the arrangement of the frames - show, in the frames, live portraits/ images of television newsreaders from all over the world.
Their starting point is the concept that the watching of television news is part of the everyday life in all regions and cultures of the world. In the living rooms of houses and apartments, in local bars and in slums and huts, people are watching the news at every moment of the day.
This activity connects almost all the people in the world.
Although the presenter has disappeared from most TV programs, in news broadcasts the image of the newsreader is still the middle point: a 'neutral' person looking directly into the camera telling us, in a clear voice, the most recent news events.
Next to this connecting inter-cultural aspect, the artists also see the newsreader as a representative of an art historical tradition: that of the portrait.
From time immemorial, faces have been portrayed and placed in a frame - a ritual phenomenon that everybody recognizes. The face of the newsreader which appears every day on the television screen, well groomed, well lit, cropped and framed, can be seen as an example of this ritual.
Essentially, the image is the same everywhere, differing only in details. Alongside the appearance and clothing of the newsreaders |
materials | Video Led displays |
size | image 300 x 350 cm (3x) |