Michiel van Bakel

Equestrian

Michiel van Bakel

Deborah Post, Guus in ‘t Rietveld

A horsewoman is riding on an abandoned square. Through the simultaneous filming with 32 digital cameras, the movements of the horse create a surreal impression and are placed out of time.

Re-sculpted in Time: Sanatorium Zonnestraal

Michiel van Bakel

Drifting between data and images and hovering amidst seemingly incompatible moods: Tarkovsky’s cinematic dreams on the one hand and Zonnestraal’s utopian architecture on the other. Sanatorium Zonnestraal (1928): Famous symbol of enlightened rational thinking par excellence: transparency, light, air, tranquillity and space. ‘One of modern architecture's most important buildings’ (Wikipedia). The contrast with the sick person in need of healing could hardly be greater. Van Bakel has scanned the sanatorium building and converted it to 'point clouds’ that turn into models where you seem to move in between - or rather: seem to fly through - as in a dream. He combines these ghostly, whimsical images with the fragmented dream images of buildings, land…

P-9830

Michiel van Bakel

Animated film about Port number 9830 on the Maasvlakte, Rotterdam. The natural and technological landscapes of the port area come together in an abrasive way. Captured with a homemade camera with a handblown-glass camera eye, its lens filled with seawater. It produces miraculous time-space deformations.

Forest Paths (forget Heidegger)

Michiel van Bakel

A warped stroll through a forest. Animated still photographs reveal movement and light on the forest paths that are otherwise invisible to the human eye. Van Bakel made a ‘scanner-camera’ that extends human vision to near-infrared light in an other-worldly way. What’s this thing called vision? What’s the fundamental difference between what a robot discerns, what a flying insect detects or man’s observation?