Martijn Veldhoen

Public Spaces, 10:53, Color, Stereo, NL, 2006

Nagrada Sfinga

In the category of video art work, the first prize was won by the work called Public Spaces by Martijn Veldhoen from Holland. This work has high technical and artistic value as a video artwork. (Mileta Poštić on behalf of Jury)
Once ‘public space’ was a clear concept. It. was a kind democratic medium that could be accessed by everyone, safely and freely available for traffic between people. Now things have changed; thanks to mobile communication systems, we carry our personal space with us like an air bubble, and the public sphere has become a set of subsets. Everyone is always connected to something or someone else, so that the space between has taken on a virtual form of its own, which constantly changes with time. What is left over between the subsets has the characteristics of a vacuum; it generates forces. It sucks in a great many individuals who cannot or will not ‘participate’, or who do not have or do not want to have access to the means that link the individual bubbles. Veldhoen shows us how differently we now perceive public space, certainly not as a safe place any more.