Zoro Feigl: Constructing Time

While trying to control the factors that influence the outcome I also define where I want the piece to go it's own way. It is controlling where there should be chaos.

In the first instant I work from a physical experience, a bodily reaction. How materials work and how they react on their surroundings. And how the viewer can be integrated in the work, be part of the experience. I like patterns and rhythms on a physical level. Seeking patterns is part of our instincts.
Chaotic systems; systems that react and work by definable laws but still have a seemingly unpredictable outcome. A small change in one of the variables of one particular place can have huge consequences for the outcome in other places: the Butterfly effect.
Where the viewer can be part of or can react to the work, you create another level of experience. By interacting the viewer makes the experience his or her own and this creates room for interpretation and association.
The container from Onshore/Offshore is moving very rhythmically, back and forth, and is only slightly effected by the weight of the people in it. In the movement there is very little chaos, as I define it. The chaotic part of it may be the movements of the light bulb which exaggerate small irregularities.
Some of my sculptures have a world of variables to play with, others have only a few. But as soon as there is movement, rhythm and patterns emerge, offering an ever-changing choreography.

"Have I found a pattern yet?" is the question I am most often asking, when I get caught looking at my own work. Quickly followed by "or is there none?"
There is an enormous urge to find patterns, to recognize the rhythms and structures that are present. Although large parts of the work react in similar ways over and over again, there are small differences that open a world of variables.

It is like I have heard each member of the choir sing and know their capabilities but am never to able to hear the full choir sing together until the opening night.

Often the work I make is site specific, or requires something from the space that I cannot offer in my studio. In such a case you try to understand the relation between space and work by scale models or mockups.

As soon as things start to move it becomes a lot more difficult. When the interaction of materials is so important, it is almost impossible to work on scale. So it becomes a mind game; a structure of tests and assumptions.

The different parts are made on location and hopefully they start adding up. From a technical as well as a visual perspective.

Physical presence is an essential part of my work - the work is physical: the noises, shakes and moves. And it has an impact on how people deal with those themselves and watch how others cope.

When you are developing an idea, you make an imaginary model of it. You don’t know how it is going to work out, but you try to visualize it. Eventually the work becomes more interesting when it really exists and you can watch how people react.

When things change slightly every revolution it is not really a loop. It becomes a pattern of similar yet slightly different circles.

Circles seem to be a logical representation of repetition, of endlessness and borders. You can never reach the end of a circular line, yet it is very clear that it not endless.

Circles were once seen as the most natural or logical shape. Though nature seems to have very little real circles. Nearly every circle in nature is not perfectly round, but something close to it. Our Planet is nearly a sphere and the orbit it makes is almost a circle.

When these circles are not perfect their behavior starts to become less easy to predict, to control. Only mathematically perfect circles behave in a predictable way. Nature's circles do their own thing and my work thrives on their irregularities.

I had this fantasy as a kid about low-tech time traveling. A simple plan that could give at least the suggestion of standing still in time.

My mom used to have a 'pipowagen' - a trailer with the charm of an old traveling circus - parked at the Amsterdam waterfront. We spent a lot of time there.

I fantasized about the possibility of tying a rope between our 'pipowagen' and the moon. Since the moon travels around us in approximately a day, I thought the rope could take me around the world and bring me back in a day. The cart would need some upgrading for all the different places we would be visiting and the enormous speed at which we would be traveling. The greatest part of this contraption would be that it would stay the same time of day, all day long. It would be always day, or night, depending on the length of the rope.

By giving up a fixed point in space I could stand still in time. I wondered what would happen at the dateline in the middle of the Pacific. Would it just suddenly become the next day while it is still noon?

I spent a lot of time on this fantasy: designing a possible cart that could travel across sea as well as land and thinking about how it would interact with the world at these enormous speeds.

The notion of time and space started somewhere here. Clearly aware of the impossibilities, it got stuck in my head. When biking through Amsterdam I still like to think about how space and time relate - that we are standing still and the earth is a giant treadmill, only moving because it is pushed around by me and many others. Relativity.

In 2005 we wandered trough an old deserted sanatorium in the woods of Brandenburg, in Germany. This area consisted of several old hospitals in decay; abandoned and overgrown. Nature took its control over the buildings.

One of these hospital buildings, which was in a reasonable state, housed my Studio at this time. We wondered around through these buildings a lot. The decay there was a strange reminder of times passed. At one of these hours long walks I noticed an old big clock hanging above a door in an arched hallway. Struck by the beauty of this clock I decided I wanted to take it down. With some help, I balanced on the top edge of the half opened door and took the clock with me as a souvenir. It was a Soviet clock with the letters CCCP on the clock face. But it wasn't really that old; it worked on electricity. So I took the clock to my studio.

Since I couldn't read any of the markings I just hooked a plug up to it.

To my surprise, the hands on the clock started moving back and forth, completely irregularly. Sometimes really fast and then hanging around at a certain time for twenty seconds.

It was a clock, which showed the possible times of the day in complete randomness; consecutive moments in no particular order.

The readymade I found that day became a very imported piece of work. Unfortunately the clock stopped working completely before its movements were documented. The hands I removed in order to repair the clock but I never got to do it. Now it is hanging again in my studio without the hands; telling the time without specifying the moment.

In the basement of the Rietveld there was a room, which I used as a studio for a while. The only sunlight I could see there, was a small spot that came down through the staircase windows. The beginning and end of the day were marked off by pieces of tape: A sun dial.

At a certain point I placed some magnifying glasses along the path of the sun. They would leave a burn mark when the sun would pass by and shine through them. Every day a new scar of that particular moment was created.

The sun's movement throughout the day translated into a burn mark from west to east on the floor, while the change from spring to summer made it slowly move from north to south. Every day a new line was printed, creating a recording of time. Slowly more and more material burned away, leaving clean spots where the clouds had been.

From the burns where the sun had been shining, a photograph very slowly started appearing, untouched by the shadows of the trees and clouds.

Time plays another role in the work, though in a less noticeable way. My work wears quickly. It tends to break, wear out, or stop working after a while. Where it breaks a scar is made.

Often the falling apart of the materials leaves clear marks of the changes it has been through, forming scars of time.

The wearing created an image and so breaking became the goal.

A pendulum which drives back and forth over a wall leaving a slowly darkening tire mark.

Standing in the container will create the effect of being on open water. Within the container it will be fairly dark. A minimal installation with light and fluids will be there to exaggerate the movements of the container and reflect on the experience of being at sea in a claustrophobic space. A rumbling sound created by the movement vibrates trough the interior walls.

Around the same time Caroline Nevejan asked me to think and collaborate in YUTPA I was invited to be part of Subvision festival Hamburg. I decided to use Subvision as an opportunity for realizing my witnessed-presence research experiments.

The main point of Subvision festival was to use a standard 20 ft shipping container to show your work in or use it for your work. This is the reason for trying to create the feeling I described above.

> The Work will be partly in the container and party be the container itself. I would like to lift the container slightly of the ground and put pneumatic lifting devices under the container. By electronically controlling the lifting devices (controlling the air-pressure) the whole container can be lifted and lowered (approx. 15 cm) and will create a wave-like motion. The pneumatics will make sounds and vibrations, which will be intensified by the soundboard-like qualities of the container. To get a clear idea of the technology and understand the movement, please look at the link below.

The container was the first place I started. I built a small container of wood to see what a container essentially is. Then, after I made the model, I marked the actual size of the container to feel how big the space really is. I tried to feel the space and asked myself why I was doing this, what is this space? Not what I wanted to do in the container space, but what is this thing. The small container was constructed at 12 cm - the real container is 2.5 by 6 meters (the 20 ft model) - so I played mostly with the little container.

I moved the container around but decided to move back to the most basic idea; move the container back to sea. Then it becomes a technical story of realizing this. The feeling and experience of the movement became more important than the visual effect of the movement.

Usually when I do my research I go very wide and think about all the consequences. When I know what I find interesting, I focus again. While going wide I might discover things that I can use for other work or that set my initial research in a new direction. So I thought about how a liquid might react to the motion, about other types of movements and about the play of light in conjunction with this movement. What happens if you add some rolling objects?

I did a test run with a container that I had borrowed somewhere in Amsterdam. The idea was developed without actually seeing it; it was made on the basis of a model, so it's definitely exciting to see how it turns out.

These containers are meant for cargo, not for people. In the container a light bulb was hanging on a long piece of wire. It slowly moves back and forth as it is counter balancing the movements of the space.

The bulb became a symbol of life. Cargo doesn’t need any light, it’s fine in the dark. Being inside became an experience of being a refugee, a stowaway.

Some people couldn’t stand in the container, as if seasickness immediately struck them. Others liked it and sat there to enjoy the rocking motion of being in the belly of a ship.

Hundreds of people are found in containers every year, either dead or alive.

The more you take control as an artist, the more you can send or guide the experience. Without a framework or boundaries it can be very boring, even formless. These borders function as a framework for opportunity.

By giving limitations a certain sense of control is kept. If the piece would be completely interactive - and the public can move the monster - it becomes a whole different thing. I find it exciting if the possibilities of the public are restricted, because it is more binding.

In a sense it became an interactive work after all; in the interpretation of it and in the ways people started working with it. Either by grabbing their skateboards or by doing a performance on top.

It functions as a framework, within it’s boundaries things can happen. It is as if you give people a piece of paper in the expectation they will draw, but to find paper planes when you come back.

The container functions as a symbol for globalization and freedom of transport, while the people who make the products shipped in these containers are often not allowed to travel anywhere.

A man in suit approached me: "I have never been in a container before, while every container here has been through my hands". He was a sales manager for the container company that sponsored the containers we were working with. He preferred other methods of traveling. "These ships are magnificent to look at, but I don't like being on board."

The Russian art and activism group Chto delat/What is to be done? approached me soon after they arrived. They wanted do a performance on top of the moving container.

Talking about the symbolism of these containers and the consequences of globalization they proposed this performance:

"These statistics are not complete"

The container became a stage: Armed with a megaphone, statistics and statements were shouted around. From the container within came the sound of people trying to get out. A sound that slowly died away until the container was opened. See a video of the performance above.

The viewers often don’t want to interrupt each other’s view. Which creates a funny situation when there is not that much to see, when it is mostly a work that can be ‘viewed’ with your eyes closed.

Imagine this container. When you walk around, you see one container among many others. The outside looks very generic or normal. It is what it is. Until you come closer and notice the movements it makes and the low vibrating noise that comes out of it. The door is slightly cracked open. You look in and see a dangling light. Either you step in or you don’t. That’s completely up to you, but as soon as you see other people going in or out, with a smile or a frown, you want to see it too.

The viewer steps inside a world, which is composed to create a certain input. How the input is perceived is not part of me, it’s part of the viewer. Some run outside because they can’t stand the atmosphere and others close the door because they want the experience to be as intense as possible. And then you have the kids who come back for another ride as if they are on a fair.

Inside I find it a joy to see how people react to each other. Mostly they assume a similar position to the ones that were there first. If there is one leaning against the wall, others will join. If one sits down, others will.

To document the work the outside gives a better view of what is happening even though the experience is happening on the inside. Most people make photos of the outside. The thing works better as an anecdote then a video.