Where it all began...

In 2007 I started my second year of my MFA in Art, Space and Nature. The first month an a half I spent thinking about what I wanted to achieve/do with this masters. I started reading books, mainly philosophy books. One of them was called 'The Fate of Place'. this book gives an overview of the history of the notions of place and space in philosophy. Both the thinking and the book accompanied me on my 2.5 week residency in Chicago at the John David Mooney Foundation as part of my course. While travelling there I decided that whatever direction I would take it needed to relate to landscape/space and people. While being in Chicago I tried to have a look at an old airfield/park to maybe re-design. During one of the field trips to the derelict airfield, the cold drove me into the Field Museum. It is there where I discovered the mapping festival, which was on while I was there. I bought a ticket to see the map exhibition and darwin exhibition. I think I spent about 2 hours looking at the most fantastic maps. The most beautiful one was this Japanese map depicting the route from a certain city to the Emperor's Palace. The unusual thing about this map was that it was drawn 3D with the route being a straight line with very detailed sketches of what was along the route. It pictured more the experience of the route, then an actual cartographic plan/map of the route. An other interesting thing was the medium it was drawn on. It was drawn on a rice paper scroll. I can still remember looking through the protecting glass box longing to unscroll the whole thing. I wanted to see the complete story. It was at this point that I realised that our daily maps have lost their human connections and that landscapes are to be experienced to be fully appreciated and to be loved. I could/can only hope that one day I will be able to make people feel and understand the landscape as I did that day through that drawing/map.
The following day I started to explore the wider city. During these explorations I made these abstract sections through the city (drawings). I also visited the map exhibition at the museum of contemporary art, which was again interesting, but nothing grabbed me as the scroll map. I continued my daily explorations till the last week. On one of my walk abouts. I followed the chicago river North. Reaching what I think to remember was North Avenue. There I discovered a big art supply shop. These kind of shops are to me what, a candy store is to a little kid. I walked in browsed through the different aisles. One aisle in particular, caught my attention, the ailse with the adhesives. 'Eureka', I thought, 'for my last night presentation, showing what I had been doing during my stay, I could make a wall drawing with coloured masking tape'. Using tape meant, I did not need to re-paint the walls, saving myself a lot of time.
In the last week I started my drawing on the wall. It became a big map of Chicago covering the 3.5 by 5m wall and and the same amount of floor space. There was one peculliar thing about this map. In the centre where I had been walking I followed the map faithfully, but where I hadn't walked the artistic composition took the over hand. By doing this I questioned the map of Chicago. Why would I believe a piece of paper if I myself had not seen this landscape and verified it? A map quite often is just a snapshot of a specific time and can be out of date and wrong. This was my first tape installation. The wall drawing itself evolved lots after talking to John David Mooney, who told me: "It is not finished, I give you 2 hours to finish it and you know what to do". And I did. He gave me the right push at the right time.