DRIFTER

a performative installation of a floating concrete block

Drifter calls on the viewer to reconsider our relationship with our living environment, which is often accepted as static and lifeless. It generates a sense of disbelief and displacement, creating tension between humanity versus nature and chaos versus order. Disconnected from our expectations, the work floats between the possible and impossible.

New York 2017

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Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam - Photo: Ronald Smits

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam - Photo: Ronald Smits

Drifter is an installation consisting of one floating concrete block (4 x 2 x 2 meters). The sculpture floats and moves at slow speed on a controlled three-dimensional path. With great accuracy, it creates a performance in its space.

This concrete monolith represents a basic building unit, the primary element by which human built environment is constructed. On its own the concrete block is nothing, lost in space and time without reference to anything; it is always searching to be part of something bigger. Drifter wants to make people feel that without context they are lost. Without context, the object feels alien, divorced from its source. Moreover, Drifter shows how unknown the world and its mechanisms still are to mankind and emphasises the urge to expand our horizon and evolve in time.

Drifter also refers to the book Utopia (Thomas More 1516). This novel mentioned concrete for the first time. Back then, concrete was 'just' a science fiction idea which centuries later became the foundation of our society. With Drifter we want to evoke a reaction to dream the improbable. Who knows, our next idea might be the foundation for our new world. 

Coöporation Partner: SKYSPIRIT

Read more: Think Giant Concrete Blocks Can't Fly? Think Again, creators.vice.com | In Miami, It’s a Bird. It’s a Plane. It’s ... a Flock of Drones?, nytimes.com