de-con-struct
Site specific video installation, city center Helmond, 2011
Presented at the Heritage Biennial Commissioned by the Municipality of Helmond
'de‑con‑struct' is a site‑specific video installation developed for the Heritage Biennial, addressing how urban redevelopment constructs, reframes, or suppresses collective memory. The work examines the tension between archival documentation and the active manipulation of historical narratives through architecture, naming, and municipal decision‑making.
The installation draws on archival material from the former Begemann steel‑construction company: historical photographs, technical drawings and interviews with former employees. These sources were digitally deconstructed and reassembled into three video layers projected onto windows, the façade and a monitor, creating an immersive field of shifting perspectives for passers‑by.
The work was situated on the former factory site. Notably, the newly built square, despite Begemann’s progressive labour conditions, was named after a competing company known for exploiting its workers. This discrepancy forms the conceptual core of the installation: the way urban space legitimises certain histories while obscuring others.
Over ten days, the installation introduced a temporary counter‑logic into the public domain, allowing archival fragments, personal testimonies and digital reconstructions to coexist and propose an alternative reading of the city’s industrial past.