CELL NO.2

We were invited to participate within the Underground Festival Amsterdam to make an exhibition in a tunnel-like space underneath a bridge. The Amsterdam Underground Festival explored the underground city and its culture. The purpose of the festival was to open the doors of several underground spaces that are normally not open to public and to present theater plays, dance performances, guided tours and visual art.

During the research period we visited different underground spaces. We were interested in the preceded spaces we imagined before we would actually enter a place. Every time we entered a space, the mysterious character of the underground space disappeared. For us the quality of the festival concept was related to its imaginative element. If the concept of the festival was to open these underground spaces and make them more visible and transparent we would definitely want to preserve this strong notion of imagination. So we decided to build up a wall, to preserve the mystic quality of the ‘underground’. We wanted to contain the possibility to wonder about what’s living or happening underneath or behind the wall.

Behind the wall we made the suggestion that there was an underground party going on. You could hear the techno music and you could see the stroboscope but there was no entrance. The public was shut out. This rough gesture suited the atmosphere of the space like it was before the festival started. Normally a lot of homeless people are sleeping and using their drugs underneath this bridge. These homeless people had to leave the festival terrain because the festival manager had claimed the space, so in a way they were shut out as well.

In this exhibition we worked together with Benoit Goupy. We managed to create one atmosphere in the space. Benoit used our sound of the installation for a movement of the light bulbs. These flickering lights gave the suggestion that the party illegally tapped from the electricity of the underground space. Furthermore he used a smoke machine on a regular interval to create a dense atmosphere that suited the underground space. Especially in the evenings there were a lot of people walking in and around the installation looking for the entrance of the discotheque.