Hans Overvliet | i.d. of a shared cloud / wave / home | 2015 - 2020

i.d. of a shared cloud / wave / home is an attempt to reframe the vast and continuous flow of information about conflicts in distant places that reaches us through digital networks. This information is usually displayed transiently on screens. There is too much and it passes too quickly to enable intimate reflection and a sense of physical relation.

The installation turns a collection of net-sourced data into a lasting material structure. Reframing the data – also in a literal sense – it consists of three metal frames in which three sets of 1000 Internet-sourced images are suspended on transparent sheets. The images show explosions, waves and ruins, which are superimposed by open-source meta-data related to the images.

Hans Overvliet

i.d. of a shared cloud / wave / home 2015 - 2020 3 steel frames, 50 x 71 x 134cm (LxWxH); 3,000 Internet-sourced images printed on 150 DIN A4 sheets of transparency film

i.d. of a shared cloud / wave / home is an attempt to reframe the vast and continuous flow of information about conflicts in distant places that reaches us through networked communication. This information is usually displayed transiently on screens. There is too much information and it passes too quickly to enable intimate reflection and a sense of physical relation.

The installation turns a collection of Internet data into a lasting material structure. Reframing the data – also in a literal sense – it consists of three metal frames in which three sets of 1,000 Internet-sourced images are suspended on transparent sheets. The three "out-lines" of filing cabinets function as a transparent library for three topics that play a role in the background of every contemporary (mediated and mediatized) conversation: war, climate change and the ruins of physical structures and spaces, which result from the first two categories.

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The images in the installation reflect these three categories: 1,000 explosions, 1,000 waves and 1,000 ruins, which are superimposed by open-source meta-data related to the images. The images of explosions and clouds are inscribed with reference codes to the military status of the area concerned, sourced the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Bethesda, MD, USA. The waves are accompanied by formulas and models on climate change collected from institutes that, without corporate money, conduct research into climate change; the causes and consequences thereof.

The images of ruins are superimposed by maps of national libraries of some 70 countries, sent to me during an earlier project that engaged with the loss of libraries as a physical source of ( concentrating ) knowledge, information and meeting and - in some cases - outright censorship.

The relevance of this data super imposed on these images in terms of the new meanings it might generate, is the juxtapositions between image and model, between the seemingly harmless metadata hidden beneath the image. In nowadays media the difference between the image itself and the model of the image disappears; the simulacra of Beaudrillard are omnipotent present and produce – if we don’t change - more of the same: nullitÊ - zeroness.

Context The materialisation and connection to our physical experiences of all those images is quite a challenge. Jean Baudrillard suggests that we have entered a fundamental process regarding our perception of the image: ‘it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever; it is its own pure simulacrum."

Zygmunt Bauman, the Polish sociologist, states in Liquid Modernity that everything is temporary, transient or changeable. He also notes that people have never communicated so much before, without any goal or result. For Bauman, the (social) media are like a huge house full of mirrors. In this house we do meet people, but we do not enter into dialogue. There are differrences of opinion, but no real, constructive debate. This creates the illusion of connection with others when this is not actually there.

In Bauman's "fluid culture", insecure relationships, or love without a face and without commitment, prevail. This fluid culture lives on waves of feelings and ideas that may be there today, but will disappear tomorrow at the latest. It amuses people but at the same time keeps us under control. Baudrillard's society of spectacles with its nullité is imperative. It destroys context, history, consistent content, distorts realities. distant suffering (work series) This work is part of distant suffering (2013-), an ongoing series of work that investigates the role of news media in the representation of military violence and memory.

With his art-series distant suffering, Hans Overvliet questions the role of the media consumer, yet equally his own role as an artist. By constructing these works of existing media images, Overvliet allows us to view these images through an entirely different lens. Most often, the artist’s intended themes include the multiplicity of visual culture and its mindless consumption. Overvliet’s works ask from the spectator to gaze intently at them, in order to instigate in the viewer a new awareness about the images around them.

Julia Mulié , Assistant Curator Vleeshal Art Centre, Middelburg, NL, 28/11/2016