Speedy Take It Easy
1998
Installation, variable dimensions.
Materials: dvd, paper, screen
Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK7518_M357).
On a small screen on the ground a mouse is nibbling on a piece of cheese. When the onlooker approaches, a motion detector clicks and the mouse disappears in a complex of cardboard pipes. Speakers in the pipes create the illusion that the mouse is running away through an improvised labyrinth. On the other side, the same volatile experience awaits the viewer. The mouse disappears when the viewer comes too close. With this highly elementary form of interaction, the artist invokes frustration. You can never really see the image. Approaching the image always causes the image to disappear. The image of the mouse running away is only visible for a split second, after that it is only exists in the mind of the viewer. Gert Robijns confronts the viewer with the spectacular nature of simple experiences, such as a mouse running away. Robijns himself hopes that his work can be an accident, something that happens to the viewer, without forcing himself upon him or her. His work is not a reflection or representation of reality, but an extension thereof. This way he wants to stimulate and intensify the perception of the viewer. In Speedy take it easy he brings the ‘dead architecture’ of the system of corridors to life, for example by placing sound in them.
