Michiel van Bakel

(Holanda - Netherlands)

MICHIEL VAN BAKEL - Studied astronomy, photography (Psychopolis; Frans Zwartjes) and psychology for several years before he chose for fine art, at art school. Van Bakel expresses himself through film and videos, sculpture and installations. His work focuses on people and their surroundings, often resulting in a poetic reality. It conveys a fascination for the tension between man and technology, perception of time in a delicate man-made ecosystem. Van Bakel lives and works in Rotterdam. Exhibitions, screenings, installations: a selection 2020 - International Video Art Festival Now&After | Media Art Centre | Moscow | RU, - Groupshow 'Lucas Gassel revisited' | Cacaofabriek | Helmond | NL, - Dark camera's | National Glassmuseum | Leerdam | NL -Oberhausen Short Film Festival | DE, -ART Rotterdam | Zic Zerp | NL, 2019 -Digital Tarkovsky | EYE FilmInstitute | Amsterdam | NL, - Paradocs IDFA | Amsterdam | NL, - Dutch Design Week | Klokgebouw | Eindhoven | NL, - Antimatter festival | Victoria | Canada, - INVIDEO by aiace | Crema | IT, - Nederlands Film Festival | Utrecht | NL, - Nemaf | New Media Art Festival | Seoul | S Korea, - Groupshow Homerun#1, De Natuur | Willem Twee | 's-Hertogenbosch |NL, - Groupshow In Beweging | KunstWerkt | Schiedam | NL, - Musical collaboration with Mark Alban Lotz | KUUB | Utrecht | NL, - Kurzfilmtage | Oberhausen | DE, - Aanschouw | Torrance Art Museum | Los Angeles | USA, - Traverse Video Festival | Toulouse | FR, among many others.

TITLE

RESCULPTED IN TIME SANATORIUM ZONNESTRAAL 

TIME

9'50''

YEAR

2020

COUNTRY

Netherlands

FORMAT

16:9

CREDITS:

Short experimental film by Michiel van Bakel 2020, Original 4K video, stereo, 9:50. Concept, photography, 3D pointclouds, animation, editing, sound etc. by Van Bakel.

With images & samples from: Sanatorium Zonnestraal Hilversum, Tarkovsky's films: Ivan's Childhood, Solaris, Mirror, Stalker, Nostalghia and Terry Riley's 'In C'

SYNOPSIS:

Sanatorium Zonnestraal (Duiker, 1928): Famous symbol of enlightened rational thinking par excellence: transparency, light, air, tranquillity and space. 'One of modern architecture's most important buildings' (Wikipedia).
The contrast with the sick person in need of healing could hardly be greater.

Van Bakel has scanned the sanatorium building and converted it to 'point clouds' that turn into models where you seem to move in between - or rather: seem to fly through - as in a dream.
He combines these ghostly, whimsical images with the fragmented dream images of buildings, landscapes and a sporadic human figure derived from the masterful films of Andrei Tarkovsky: Stalker, Solaris, Nostalghia, The Mirror. Photogenic images with an almost magical inexplicability that resemble a hallucination.

Using photogrammetry Van Bakel interpreted Tarkovsky's film scenes to point clouds, enabling him to move freely through the otherworldly images as if flying through a surreal dream-scape.

ADDITIONAL INFO:

A sanatorium is a medical facility, a clinic, for long-term illness (in the pre-antibiotic era). It is a well-known topic from literature; Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain is set in a sanatorium - a metaphor for the sick state Europe was in around World War I with aggressive nationalism and militarism. Zonnestraal was built around 1928, for diamond- workers who suffered from tuberculosis. The same year Mann's novel was published. In Zonnestraal people would rest, sunbathe (heliotherapy) and of course, dream.


TO VIEW THE VIDEO ONLY UNTIL THE OFFICIAL OPENING DAY

On +art contemporary's YouTube channeland from the channel "thewrong.tv" and channel 180 "180.thewrong.tv" (Portugal)


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