A darkened space is occupied by three objects of the kind you normally encounter only in public spaces: a telephone booth, a waste bin and a post box. The things that happen or end up in them, however, are anything but public. Through sounds and image projections from inside (the telephone booth and the waste bin) and outside (the post box) we are made privy to matters that are none of our concern. The intimate conversations and the private quarrels conducted over the telephone are not intended for our ears, and there is even a law of privacy to protect posted letters and cards against prying readers. The things that disappear into the waste bin are of no further interest to their owner, yet this does not prevent them from telling a story about him or her. One thinks of detective films, in which the hero rummages through the contents of refuse bags, looking for tiny traces of evidence. Or again of a variation on the old adage — show me what's in your rubbish bin and I'll tell you who you are. The boundaries between the public and the private are being stretched further and further by technological developments: mobile telephone conversations in trains and restaurants, non-secure e-mail messages and personal data in cyberspace. Add to this the fact that the growing population of the world is being constantly squeezed together in cities where it is now barely possible to escape the eyes and ears of our fellow humans. Lucas Bambozzi, the restless traveller, doubtless spends a lot of time in public spaces. The frequent traveller restricts his private space to his suitcase. Even the hotel room that is cleaned out daily during your absence is not private. In this installation our voyeuristic tendencies and our quest for the true nature of the other, which are also the subject of the video 'I have no words', are thrust right into the foreground. The intimacies divulged by these three public objects tell us something about strangers and arouse our curiosity, inciting us to imagine, reconstruct or simply to invent them.
– Lies Holtrop |
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