Infrastructure v2

Infrastructure Project

Infrastructure is most commonly defined as:

1. The basic, underlying framework or features of a system or an organization.

 2. The fundamental facilities and systems serving a country, city, or area, as transportation and communication systems, power plants, and schools.

 3. The military installations of a country.

Infrastructure, to me, is a sub official phenomenon, even though it is obvious and visible to the naked eye. Because for those of us who don’t work directly with it have a tendency to take it for granted. Infrastructure is what binds the society together and because of this the infrastructure of a country is the first and most important military target in a conflict. The destruction of these structures creates chaos and destabilizes the inflicted area and is therefore also an important target for terrorists.

When I first started this project it was about connecting different locations together to give them a collective unity. I did this by extracting an element that was present in all of the photography’s and recreated this outside the frame of the photo to create plausible connections between them. The element I chose in this piece was electrical wires and I extended these wires with needle and thread. By sewing a new structure between these locations I created a new structure between the photos, and by using needle and thread I wanted to communicate how fragile these structures can be. What started as one photography installation piece called “Infrastructure V.1”, where I practically stumbled up on the theme by discovering the structures of electrical wires in many photos from a trip to Thailand , has evolved and grown.

After this piece while traveling to other countries I started to collect infrastructure in different shapes and forms from all over the world. It is truly fascinating, because the country or region can really be seen through the underlying structure of their society. The project is still about connecting locations but now maybe even more about the similarities and differences of infrastructures between countries.

In the “Infrastructure V.2” piece I used photographs from both Thailand and USA . In this piece I included a moving photography of an American flag and I got the idea to do more frames with a moving image.