RUBEN BELLINKX
Amsterdam Water Works | Ruben Bellinkx (1975, Wilrijk, Belgium)
Ruben Bellinkx works with film, video, photography, and recently also with installations. His choice of a particular medium is an important factor in the realization of a work. Cinematic and photographic means offer him the possibility to compose, to isolate elements, to repeat and compress, all of which give a work a certain abstraction. Bellinkx is especially interested in the process that lies behind an image. Because he stages his images in order to show this process, his work often has a surrealistic touch.
The Amsterdam Water Works facility is disappearing in the Zuidas, as it were, becoming more and more hemmed in by new high-rise buildings. This is a spot that is strongly related to the past; it is completely separate from what is happening around it. Because the utility has a very complicated underground infrastructure, it cannot be relocated. Yet it is one of Amsterdam’s most important utilities, supplying high quality drinking water and even being listed on stock exchanges alongside concerns like Vittel and Spa.
The water tower used to be a kind of beacon in the landscape. Bellinkx wants to bring it back into its own again, and has developed a number of proposals for an art application.
The Water Tower - Because pumps can nowadays adjust their speed to the demands of the water supply system, the water tower on the terrain has in fact become superfluous. Only for the unique occasion is the tower is still in use – namely, when a power outage occurs in the pumping station.
Proposal - I have looked for a way in which to make this special spot more visible and bring it to people’s attention. I want to give the water tower the function of a projection screen by projecting a film on its reservoir at night. With the help of three powerful video projectors, you will see a projection on every side of the reservoir. In this way the water tower can once again become a clear marker, even in the future Zuidas. To realize this plan, I searched for a film image that questions our matter-of-course use of drinking water, so that the nature of the water tower and that of the projected image will reinforce each other.
