Concrete Wind
Amsterdam
Netherlands, 2018

During the renovation of De Walvis on Bickerseiland, there was a phase when the weather found its way inside. The façade had been opened up, and the builders were struggling to keep the elements at bay. Wind and light set the plastic sheeting in motion: it billowed, fell back and stirred again. The building seemed to breathe, from within.

Hans Wilschut seized on this moment to make a video work that is permanently on view in the reception hall of De Walvis. In its slow movements, the viewer moves towards the building’s solid core: the concrete. Between them, the plastic shifts like a thin, restless skin. It catches the light, pulls taut, then slackens. For a moment, the boundary between inside and outside becomes porous.

What unfolds is not a record of the renovation, but an event in its own right. The movements are small, almost imperceptible, yet the space is constantly changing. This abstraction gives rise to a sense of stillness. The building no longer seems like a structure that offers shelter, but like a body taking the outside world in and letting it go again.

The video work offers a new perspective on the same building Wilschut photographed throughout its renovation, over a period of almost two years. Those images came together in his book De Walvis, about the transformation of the building on Bickerseiland. In the film, he returns to that story, but now in motion: a moment when the architecture seems briefly to forget its fixed form.