Raquel Vermunt

Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes not at all. The journey there, the return trip, the immersion, and the time she spends somewhere ensure that Raquel creates film works about and with the location.

Raquel Vermunt takes over the baton from Thomas Bakker in this series of video art exhibitions. The screens behind the window at Langestraat 56 show video works by Dutch artists 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Raquel’s work consists of video works, installations, and architectural interventions in the exhibition space. Her practice is characterized by using the camera as a mediating instrument.

She explains: "My practice revolves around the continuous linking of movement and stagnation, capturing and holding, showing and not showing. I explore a place or space with the mechanical eye of the camera. The camera is always my point of departure. I have developed an intuitive approach to capturing space(s) with the (film) camera; certain gestures, such as zooming in and out, repetition, and moving the camera slowly, I apply in order to find depth within the frame. With the camera, I investigate the functioning and possibilities of the instrument; the camera records and I interpret.

I experience a curiosity for places where emptiness is physically tangible. Spaces that radiate calm and monumentality, and therefore also feel impersonal. These are places that stand still, where I as a maker must create the movement myself by moving both my body and my camera. I want to grasp, uncover, and translate the elusive nature of space and spatiality for the viewer, so that the captured situation can be experienced again.

My inspiration lies in being on the move, in the search itself, in occasionally seizing an image I encounter, a place I visit and temporarily inhabit. Film as a medium plays a leading role in this; the time, space, and rhythm inherent in film are aspects that inspire me to create work—elements I employ and amplify."