What was the starting point or the initial idea for this film?
I read “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time” by Mark Haddon and was
particularly taken in by this segment of text:
“I make that noise when too much information from the outside world enters my head.
Just like when you are upset and you put the radio against your ear and you set it between
two stations so that you only hear static and then you turn it up very loud, so that you can
only hear that and then you know that you are safe because you can’t hear anything else.”
Sometimes, reality can be too overwhelming to fathom and then we withdraw into our
own world in which we feel safe. We create, as it were, our own reality.
In Oops Wrong planet, I portrayed such a place in the form of a charmingly sloping
landscape of another planet. Where contact is attempted and communication is
established from afar, through the interference in the connection.
Can you share an eye opening anecdote or thought of the making-of this film
with us?
I made the video with the help of Scanner (soundtrack) and Tom Kluyskens (animation).
Scanner lives in London, Tom lives in Los Angeles and I live in Brussels. We created this
work with the computer as well as through the computer, virtually, by sending each other
e-mail files, by talking and desktop sharing via Skype.
So the way we worked matched the topic of the video wonderfully.
Is the way you worked on this film similar to your earlier works?
I never had such an intense period of research before making a video. This resulted in a
book with a text by Edwin Carels, as well as stills and sketches and an extensive
correspondence between an autistic man who calls himself Landschip and me. In this
correspondence we explored the meaning of noise, space and communication in a virtual
manner. The book is available in the break even shop by the way. Also: when I was working
on the video, they celebrated the 60th anniversary of the moon landing with lots of archival
footage of the Apollo missions on television, so I was never more inspired by my daily
environment!
What would you like to say to your audience before watching your film?
In distance lurks proximity.
Could you please tell us something about your future projects?
I’m in Paris for a few months to work on a new video inspired by the drawings of the
visionary architect Etienne-Louis Boullée. It is great to develop this project in the city
where Boullée lived and worked, to be surrounded by the spirit that he was surrounded
by, or what is left of it.
I’m also making a new video for the World Expo in Shanghai, about the play of the light
behind the windows in skyscrapers and the play of the headlights passing by on the
freeway.