SUMMARY
Ademen was inspired by the old Dutch folktale character; the Witte Wieven who was an unappreciated healer, much like modern day’s Mother Nature.
Ademen is an engaging light installation made out of LED light strips, illustrating a crying face gasping for air as she suffocates from pollution. The light movements represent her flowing tears and her breathing mouth, reacting to the daily data of the air quality index from our chosen cities.
Ademen is an engaging light installation made out of LED light strips, illustrating a crying face gasping for air as she suffocates from pollution. The light movements represent her flowing tears and her breathing mouth, reacting to the daily data of the air quality index from our chosen cities.
THE VISITOR EXPERIENCE
Visitors will experience Ademen as they cruise down the Amstel (or other suitable bridges) and go through the mouth of our wise woman.
The streaming lights of tears will flow out as they pass, with her mouth trying to grasp a bigger breath simulated by our light animation. These light effects are responsive to our set of daily air quality index data.
Visitors can also see Ademen from afar and be astonished be the giant face of our wise woman, leading them to walk over and breathe with her.
THE CONCEPT & INTERPRETATION OF THE THEME
Haiijaii Project (Haiijaii means “breathe” in Thai) incorporates art, culture and sustainability to raise awareness for global air quality. Haiijaii Project is composed of Adulaya Kim Hoontrakul, Ka Lun Karen Chan and Frederic Bussiere.
For the Amsterdam Light Festival in 2020, we are proposing a site-specific light installation inspired by the Witte Wieven, the wise woman of Dutch folklore, entitled Ademen.
Witte Wieven’s healing abilities as a herbalist was often questioned and thought to be a trickster witch. Her power in helping with physical and mental ailments reminded us of the personification of Mother Nature, who is also taken for granted and abused.
According to 2016 calculations by environmental organisation Milieudefensie, Het Parool reports that breathing in Amsterdam for a day is equivalent to smoking 6 cigarettes but considering Amsterdam is regarded to be one of the cities in the world with better air quality, how bad is it then for developing countries? And who or what is causing poor air quality in these places?
Many developed countries have economic interest and investments in other parts of the world, outsourcing consumerist production, usage of electricity and waste management to other parts of the world. This therefore does not mean that these countries do not produce pollution, it is just in another place than their own.
With Ademen, our engaging light installation, we are looking to illustrate the wise woman’s face gasping for air as she gets suffocated by air pollution: Her tears “flow” and mouth “breathes and suffocates” according to air quality index of our chosen cities. For tears we will use data from Amsterdam (Netherlands) and for breathing we will use data from Delhi (India), Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) and Xingtai (China) rotating on a consecutive set of days.
Ademen hopes to create a link of all these factors, to help our visitors realise that pollution is simply not a one way transactions but a heavily weaponized concept also in modern day society that requires everyone to come together and take responsibility. Thus when nature calls, we have to answer it from every aspects that makes up a society such as cultural, environmental and political.
Light effect preview:
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