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Possession II

YEAR : 2002
EXHIBITION : Trapholt, Kolding, DK
MEASURES : approx. L = 12 m x W = 8 m x H = 2,20 m
MATERIALS : Plaster boards, metal laths, wodden laths, plywood boards, screws, doors, rails, wheels, motor, computer, chain, cables, table lamps
DOWNLOAD : Possession_II.pdf / size 7,3 MB

Possession is taking as its starting point, the human being conceived as a subject consisting of body and intellect. The subject first enters the entrance, or rather mounts it since it is elevated slightly above floor level. Here she is met by a person who shortly presents the project to her and offers her a portable CD-player and a book to bring with her on her way further into the project. The subject’s idea of the phenomenon of the project, demoniacal possession, is intensified and extended through her attentive listening to conversations with people who, in some way or the other, have had demoniacal possession close to them. The subject’s room of representation widens and is intensified while another force is starting its operation.

After a while the subject experiences a tremor - a movement of the floor, the ceiling, and the walls-that she can neither identify nor perceive the direction of. Her body is being exposed to an unknown physical action, and she is caught by strong anxiety. Just as sudden as the impact started, just as sudden it stops, and the subject now only has the wish to leave the room, to return to the entrance, pick up her handbag, and hurry to the kindergarten to fetch her children. But when the subject leaves through the door through which she entered the room-and that ought to have brought her back to the entrance - she is presented with another room. This room is completely identical to the room she has just left, only everything, the pattern of the carpet, the lamps, the seats, are laterally reversed. The door shuts behind her, and inside the new room she again registers a tremor. She waits a little while, then goes back through the door and enters a room which is once more the mirror image of the room she came from, except that the persons who were present in the first room when she left it, are now gone. Another laterally reversed room. And yet another laterally reversed room - even the scratches on the wall that she notices are found again in the next room.

The mental navigation map that safeguards the subject against the unknown, is defective. The impossibility of the rooms’ indefinite multiplication has reduced the subject as a human being with the freedom of the will to an object of a mechanical, architectural huge contraption.

   
Panoramic photographic collage of the Hall
External views : (Left) the carpet, (right) people walking from the Hall into room A

Principle of the movement

E = entrance
A, B, C and D = rooms
Green colored bar = open doors
Red colored bar = locked doors
Yellow colored bar = emergency exit doors

Position X
Passage between E and A, B and C
Passage door D locked
Moving towards position Y
No passages
Passage door E, A, B, C and D locked
Position Y
Passage between A and B, C and D
Passage door E locked
Moving towards position X
No passages
Passage door E, A, B, C and D locked
Internal views : four corners in room A, B, C and D.
 
Internal views : doors open between room B and C
External view : from behind