Hans Wilschut

The Crystal

In The Crystal, Hans Wilschut takes the viewer to a lookout point overlooking the Yangtze. Tourists crowd onto the observation deck and spend a brief moment looking out over a city that seems to stretch in every direction. Their voices, reactions and passing remarks shape the soundtrack. Light flashes appear among the views, a glitch that unsettles the real time image.

Love In

Love In is a video work made in Chongqing. At its center is a large video screen mounted on a building, showing a continuous sequence of idealized images of love, family, and marriage. Happy couples, children, and staged moments of harmony together form a visual world in which desire and social ideals are endlessly repeated.

The Eye

The Eye shows the interior of a shopping mall with several levels, organized around a monumental sphere that architecturally dominates the space. Within a cut out section of this sphere, a single eye appears, enlarged and impossible to ignore. Through its scale and placement, the eye seems not only to inhabit the space, but to control it.

The Ultimate

The Salzbergbahn in Hallstatt connects the village to the Salzberg, where the salt mine and the Skywalk are located. The funicular takes about two minutes and operates as a compact tourist infrastructure, moving visitors up and down in a steady rhythm.

Atlantis of Galicia Video

The Spanish village of Aceredo disappeared under water in 1992 when a Portuguese hydroelectric power station created the Alto Lindoso reservoir. In recent years, a large part of northern Spain has had to contend with an enormous drought and as a result the village has partly resurfaced. Five other villages disappeared below the waterline at the time despite the protests of the inhabitants.

Suez

The Suez Canal is one of the main arteries of world trade, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. An avenue for vessels to pass between Asia and the Middle East and Europe. The canal separates Egypt from the Sinai Peninsula.

La Nave

La Nave looks at the Neapolitan suburb of Scampia at a moment when a world is already half disappearing. Around the massive housing blocks of Le Vele, long burdened by images of crime and decay, Hans Wilschut does not look for sensation, but for the slow, human, and resistant reality of everyday life. The film stays close to the buildings, to the residents, to an environment that the outside world has too quickly reduced to a single story.

Concrete Wind

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.

Frankemaheerd

Frankemaheerd in Amsterdam Zuidoost was built between 1975 and 1981 as the headquarters of the KBB Group, the company behind De Bijenkorf and HEMA, among others. Designed by OD 205, with Jacques Choisy as project architect, the complex was not conceived as a single enclosed structure, but as a series of interconnected clusters, covering a total area of approximately 40,000 square metres.

Damareos

In 2022, Hans Wilschut works in Athens for several weeks. During that period, the city is unexpectedly struck by heavy snowfall. He finds himself snowed in, in a city that is barely prepared for it. Roads become almost impassable, public transport comes to a halt, and the daily rhythm of Athens is abruptly disrupted. What is normally a city of movement, noise, and outward flowing activity suddenly appears restrained, slowed down, and almost unreal.

Lemniscate

During a weekday market day in Accra, the camera follows the movements of women who transport goods across the market as paid carriers. With metal pans balanced on their heads, they make their way through the crowd, past stalls, calling vendors, piles of merchandise and continuous flows of people. Their labour forms a rhythmic, almost choreographic line through public space. The camera moves alongside them, observing how physical effort, routine and urban dynamics become intertwined.