© 2010
Wundergarten - Holly Road
by Helga Marsala*
For Roderick Hietbrink exploring a territory means collecting data on ways of relating to places. What interests him is the possibility of inhabiting a landscape, the means of understanding and experiencing it. Sound, time and space are philosophical vessels for the elaboration of a crossing, a pause, a physical measuring determined by presence. Cancello, appears to be almost a provocation renouncing the immediacy of representation. One can just glimpse the leaves of the holly from a distance while the wood, with all its evocative might, is not seen at all. The almost geometrical curve of the tree tops traces a wavy line which becomes a barrier and prevents access, stopping you at the threshold. In the centre, in a perfect balance of composition, there is a hole. It is a narrow tunnel which leads to the trees - a point of access, which shows the violent flow of bright, early light from an exposed space to the mystic shadow of a suspended space. Holly Road, the video on two channels, again develops the theme of the edge. One of the two monitors records a trip in a jeep towards the holly trees. The fixed frame, locked into the transparent edge of the glass, meets the bluff road, creating a sense of moving through space. Once again the wait (not the arrival) and the landscape (not the place) are the protagonists. The other screen simultaneously shows a subjective shot of a walk along a fence. Fifteen minutes of film attempt to show the nearness of a territory without ever obviously entering the place itself. Hietbrink's is a conceptual work which emerges from the observation of some details he noted during his stay in the Madonie mountains, mainly the constant presence of gates which fence off protected or private areas. The need to demarcate enormous landscapes, in an attempt to create order out of the wilderness, shows the extent of the frantic human frenzy to create systems of control and management, leading to the consequent making of maps. A work that is only apparently a documentary, but which actually reveals the sense of the journey mediated by the camera. The camera-vehicle (car) and the optical camera (video camera), rather than suggesting that dromovision so typical of Virilio which excludes the edges in favour of an accelerated quartering of the frontal space, seem to be transformed into an instrument which carefully explores the side lines of the landscape, opting for a meditative and inquisitive approach.
Helga Marsala © 2008
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* Helga Marsala is a freelance curator based in Palermo, Italy.
This text is part of the publication Wundergarten, published in conjunction with the exhibition with the same title that took place in the Botanical Gardens of Palermo Sicily from September until November 2007.
To see documentation of the above mentioned works, follow these links:
http://www.roderickhietbrink.nl/work/holly-road/
http://www.roderickhietbrink.nl/work/cancello/
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