The Billboard Project: Closing the gap    (2002)                      video documentation

The idea lies in the notion of replacement.
Billboards are part of our urban and suburban environment.
They display catching images, advertisements, which are detached from their surroundings.

This work suggests another perspective:
The actual location of the billboard is displayed as its' image and therefore takes away the romantic notion
of wishing to be somewhere else. The billboard reproduces the outside and insofar achieves a conscious seeing
of the actual place one is located in. What isn't visible because of it, is displayed in it.
It closes the gap that is caused by the fact of it being there.

Concept

Images chosen carefully totrace
what is hidden by the billboards
dimensions. The effect would be that
-granted a certain perspective-
the billboard blends in like camouflage.
But even if the viewers position doesn't
exactly mirror the position of the camera,
the billboard would become an obvious
image of the actual place.

Romanticism and advertisement
manifest as a place of longing.:
Things get to us and we can't help it.
Visuals trigger our longings ,
make us cry, make us wish,
make us want. Even though we must
know that we can never come to that place...

Already there..

A place displaying itself, mirroring itself.
Initially one would wonder and ask
"what happened to the cheese, the
waterfall, the text?"

Maybe one would see the beauty/banality
of the place. "I wish I was there" turns
into the epiphany that I am always already there.

Two main facts are involved:

1) The realization of place.

2) The consideration of place

The difference

The difference/similarity between
the mirror and the reproduction

• weather
• time of day
• perspective