Roosje Verschoor: The Weather Forecast Film Installation

...

The Weather Forecast Film Installation

Exhibition
Amsterdam (NL)
July 2016
Thanks to Arnoud Holleman
Supported by Gerrit Rietveld Academie

In the original installation of The Weather Forecast, two screens play five minute loops on eightteen channels. At times, the channels respond to each other visually. The installation is shown in a dark room, with sound.
Synchronising the images was a mathematical puzzle, that I solved by editing the different videos on a big screen as a collage. The work was created through a lot of trial and error.

It is very important to me that my work resonates with the audience. I find it important to show how archetypical stories provide the basis for our thinking. In The Weather Forecast, I chose to use
the type of imagery that we often get to see on the news and social media. The recognisability of the footage shown enhances the experience that the installation offers its viewers.
Our relationship with water also consists of fun and recreation, beside the fear and awe that it can cause. Tension is created in the installation by placing the different types of images next to one another.

The video installation: a grid of eighteen videos playing simultaneously. When I am creating work, I always do a lot of research. I travel a lot and use the impressions and experiences from these travels in the next steps of the creation process. For The Weather Forecast, I visited a man in South Holland that had rebuilt Noah’s Ark, according to the measurements that are given in the Bible. He did this because he believed that another deluge will soon be upon us

The video installation: a grid of eighteen videos playing simultaneously. I definitely think that my cultural perspective plays a big role in my work. Concerning the Weather Forecast: I grew up in the Netherlands, which largely lies below sea level and faces a serious flood risk with the melting of the polar ice caps. Also, I myself am a person that enjoys water recreation, while also seeing the images of people surviving on water, or fleeing from water. Through my upbringing and education, I strongly believed that everyone deserves equal opportunities and that we shouldn’t distrust other cultures. This stems from a post-war climate in the Netherlands. I am now struggling with the current socio-political context that is very different. To me, it seems that the language and the values that my generation grew up with have been replaced with anger and fear. Of course, I often wonder whether the values I was taught were sincere and universal to begin with

The video installation: a grid of eighteen videos playing simultaneously. For the Weather Forecast, I was looking for images that have somehow become embedded in our collective memory. Images that were created by stories we were told, or images that we saw on the news. In a lot of cases, I found this type of footage online, in other cases, I created material. Generally, in my work, I really enjoy creating my own material, but sometimes found footage tells a better story. In this work especially, the juxtaposition of footage recreates our experiences with the constant input of the media and the effect this has on our collective memory