VERTIGO OR THE AREA OF FREE CATALOGUES

Jan De Cock created this installation in the autumn of 1999 at Argos, where it was also exhibited. According to the artist, the work is “a three-dimensional mise en scène with videos and construction material.” At Argos, the artist created various wooden constructions in which four videos were shown. In the middle of the space there was a track for a camera dolly, an essential tool to shoot a travelling shot—an element that literally recurs in the video Extern Travel. De Cock’s all-embracing installation is meant to blur the border between the finished product and its construction—a basic assumption that questions the way art is created. De Cock filmed at the foot of the Waterloo monument and around the legendary location—a symbol-laden site that evokes loss, defeat and death, but also hope.

De Cock not only formally relates to cinema. Apart from the reference to the travelling shot, there is the title of the installation, which echoes Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The artist was particularly impressed by the scene in which Scottie, the main character, is handed a free catalogue as he leaves the museum, though De Cock has never been able to explain why precisely this scene impressed him so much. Yet it has inspired an impressive installation, in which the artist plays a subtle game with shifting contexts and meanings, and which invites the viewer to construct his or her own story, with the help of these intriguing jigsaw pieces.

This work has been digitised in the frame of DCA Project