Flying Time

We can see the waterside on the beach; waves of clear water are rippling back and forth over the sand. A motionless woman casts a blue shadow: only her hair is moving. A woman’s voice monotonously recites time distances and time differences, each time between two places on the route from Amsterdam to Sydney. Meanwhile, the image of the shoreline is gradually shifting towards the ever deeper and darker water. The images of the rolling water surface alternate with calm underwater images of fish, a turtle and a shark. The sound goes underwater too. On the ‘way back’ from Sydney to Amsterdam, the camera slowly travels back to the shore. The image ends once again with the woman’s shadow on the beach. This work plays with time and tide – time in what is being told, tide in the images. The image of the female figure (only represented in the form of a shadow) is ambivalent: time and again, it is washed over by the waves, but when the water recedes, it is still intact on the beach. A shadow, normally speaking a fleeting thing, here proves itself equal to the strong natural force of the sea.