© Daan Russcher from the series 'A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ 

Daan what brought you into a visual art career? What were your main motivations?

Daan Russcher (DR): This story started when I was studying Built Environment, and I had to do my internships. At that point, I noticed that I was approaching my interest in architecture and urban areas the wrong way, in a way that did not make me happy. This study trained you to become a construction manager, meaning you are involved in the (re)development of buildings or areas. What I liked the most was to discover, explore and investigate these places before their transformation, especially by wandering around and adventuring (and photographing). I then noticed: I don't want to design these places myself, I want to capture them and show them to the world.

I have always been interested in the medium of photography. In the beginning, it was mainly a hobby, so I didn't get started with it professionally and a career in the visual arts never really occurred to me. I don't originally come from an environment where art plays an important role, which is why it took me quite a while to discover fine art and photography as a form of art. Once I discovered it I was surrounded by the right people that told me: “if you like this, just do something with it!” I decided to finish my bachelor Built Environment but afterward go to art school to focus on something that gave me a lot of pleasure and satisfaction: photography.

You are a graduate of HKU, The Netherlands. How was your experience? What are the important aspects in your opinion for a person who wants to pursue an artistic career? Any pros and cons?

DR: It may sound a bit cliché, but I learned a lot about myself during my period at the HKU. I re-discovered my interest in urban environments and found out what ways of working fitted me. I think reflection and confrontation are very important to be able to form yourself as an artist, and this was an important part of the studies. Constantly questioning yourself and the choices you make sometimes drove me crazy during my time at HKU. But now, after graduation, I notice that I have learned so much from it and it still keeps me being aware of the choices I make. Fortunately, I can do this to a lesser extent now, but it does ensure me to stay sharp and stay critical of what I am doing in the process of making work. The only con I can think of is that it can be difficult to make a living out of your artistic career, especially in the period after graduation. It takes a lot of perseverance to keep making work and to keep motivating yourself. Anyway, for me, the pros outweigh the cons, by far.

Installation view 'HKU Photography Graduation Show', FOTODOK, Utrecht, 2020

'A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ was selected and published by Blurring the Lines 2020, a program awarding graduates works from different schools worldwide. How was the project received in Holland? And what have you learned from this project?

DR: I think in general the project was received well, which makes me happy because my work can be a bit abstract and vague because it is in such a niche area of art and photography. Next to being selected and published by Blurring the Lines, I also won the Keep an Eye Photography Stipendium that was handed out at HKU. This prize allowed me to make a new work directly after graduating: Material Evidence of what does not Exist. This is something I am still very grateful for.

'A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ also was shortlisted by Urbanautica Institute Awards 2020. Can you introduce us to this work? What are the main assumptions?

DR: ‘A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ has its origins in a place that I often passed and which caught my attention because of its raw character: a big industrial property in the periphery of the city of Utrecht. However, it was also a place of banality - one which I could hardly absorb or reflect on once I wasn’t near it.

The project started with theoretical research into creating a definition of the concept of “place”. I did this research because I used to focus on specific places in urban environments in earlier works. I wanted to get a better understanding of how to define these places in my visual work. In this research, an important source of inspiration was the book “Species of Spaces and Other Pieces” by George Perec. In the texts, he playfully takes you to the spaces that we take for granted: starting with the bed, going to the bedroom, the apartment, the apartment building, the street. Zooming out more and more until you reach the country, Europe, and the world. In all of these places, he carefully describes what items or objects can be seen and what situations can be experienced. For instance, in the apartment, he writes down an inventory of the items of furniture and the actions represented. These are 2 pages of text filled with items, varying from “2 dogs” to “1 shelf full of books”.

© Daan Russcher from the series 'A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ 

© Daan Russcher from the series 'A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ 

© Daan Russcher from the series 'A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ 

This way of approaching and describing such a banal space with its included items inspired me to visually deconstruct a place in the same way. This industrial site in Utrecht really fascinated me, but I had never looked at the fragments that it was built up of. It was a wide area, a place where you will only go if you have a reason to be there: as a truck driver who has to go to the concrete plant or as an employee of one of the car dismantlers. I wanted to dive into the material world of functionality and infrastructure in this area and create a new definition of it.

© Daan Russcher from the series 'A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ 

After the theoretical research at first, I started to take photographs in a documenting kind of way, but I soon noticed that this way of working did not give me the focus that Perec had in its work. In order to pervade the banality of this peripheral area, I started focussing on the material fragments and characteristics: mainly made out of concrete. By deconstructing my images I was able to deconstruct the place itself and focus on these big concrete structures that I encountered. In order to really understand and define the place, I made my own concrete, to relate myself to the way in which this area has been formed and shaped. By combining prints, deconstructions of images, and self-made materials, I wanted to create a new reality in which these fragments became autonomous works instead of only being functional in their original context of an industrial site.

What was the most challenge of this project?

DR: It was hard to get focus and to pervade the banality of such a raw, wide, and inhospitable area in my photography. It took me a while to get started and find out what characterized the place. It was as if the place spoke a different language, and I had to learn how to read it.

'A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ questions the use of photography as a form of representation. You consider it urgent that in an era of overproduction of images the artist must somehow seek originality in his speech. How much does this affect your research?

DR: In my photographic work, I try to create my own signature and language, that differs from the everyday representation of urban environments in images. Most of these images show environments in a more “objective” way, that does not show someone's individual mental engagement with it. I think a “subjective” representation in photography can create new insights and new awareness in our relationship with places. Artists have this subjective look in the work they make, which allows them to show a subject in a refreshing and unique way.
The use of photography allows me to capture a place or area and to take the objects I encounter out of their original context by deconstructing my images. The deconstruction, and using these deconstructions to make my own materials or settings, is the part where the subjective representation is being formed. And also the part in which I want to show my perception of the world, that creates different imagery than the sea of images you will be swimming in most of the time.

© Daan Russcher from the series 'A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ 

© Daan Russcher from the series 'A Threefold Experience of Spaces’ 

We know that in the era of instant communication there are pitfalls that artists must also take into account when presenting and representing their work. How do you relate to this challenge in general?

DR: In presenting and representing I think the most challenging part for me is to create (online) visibility for my work. I try to force myself to promote my work on social media and by applying for open calls and contests. Especially being out there on social media sometimes feels undoable because there is an overload of visual material in these online channels, and it can feel as if the representation of your work will disappear the moment your upload is done. Next to this my work sometimes just does not appeal as it should in a digital setting: it should be seen in a physical form, and to transform this physical form into a digital representation can be challenging.

In September 2020 you exhibited your work at Fotodok. How important it is to show your art in a physical dimension. How do you relate to space and what do you think you have learned from this experience.

DR: It is essential to see and experience my work in a physical dimension. For me, it is really important to make it tangible, since most of my work is about physical materials and experiencing them. For instance: a block of concrete in A Threefold Experience of Spaces: in the exhibition, I had the ability to print it on a Dibond plate and present it the size it originally was, 160x80 centimeters. I like the way in which I can create my own space in an exhibition, a space built up out of the objects and materials I took out of their place of origin. The exhibition in Fotodok allowed me to physically bring the periphery of Utrecht into the city centre.

Installation view 'HKU Photography Graduation Show', FOTODOK, Utrecht, 2020

I read from your statement that you search for new ways to depict the urban environment? Why are you interested in urban scenarios? And how do you relate yourself to cities?

DR: This interest in urban scenarios and architecture goes way back. My father worked (and still works) at the office of an engineering company, and took me to his projects once in a while. These visits and just growing up with a person who has this interest and fascination created the same kind of fascination for urban environments. When moving around in a city, I am constantly aware of the architecture and the way a place is built up. Lately, I have been interested in the frayed edges of the city because these places seem to escape from the organized order of the city centre.

In the past, some manifestos such as "psychogeography" have highlighted the importance of relating differently to space. What do you think about the possibility of using photography and visual means to awaken a different sensitivity compared to the places we inhabit?

DR: With my work, I want to create a value or awareness of under-appreciated places in urban environments. For instance, my latest project, Material Evidence of what does not Exist, came from a working period of four months in a former industrial area that was part of the harbor of Amsterdam. At this point the area is at a crossroads: the industrial sites must make way for new circular apartment blocks. This in-between phase, in which the place is not anymore what it once was, but is also not yet what it should become, showed me a strange combination of a world that was crumbling down on the one hand but was being formed into a new shape on the other hand. In the project I scanned the material surface of this area, looking for something to hold on to. This resulted in finding and photographing fragments that almost seemed to be archeological findings of the now: a part of a spray-painted brick wall found on a vacant lot, pieces of reinforced steel as part of the foundation of one of the new apartment blocks, unfinished works of art at the creative hub that I was working in for a few months.

© Daan Russcher from the series 'Material Evidence of what does not Exist'

Especially in the Netherlands, where the urban environment is being planned and organized carefully, these undefined transitional areas don’t have a right to exist. I admit it is necessary to keep building and planning because of the housing shortages, especially in cities. However, these edges of the city can give you an experience you wouldn’t get in the city centre or other planned urban areas: these places can surprise you with beauty and adventure in their disorganization and decay. The only thing is you have to adopt an active way of looking. And I think photography allows me to do so, and also allows me to show the value of these places to the world.

Can you tell us something about "Phenomenology of Expressive Space"? And what do you mean by "Expressive Space”?

DR: In this work, I did visual research into architectural elements that recurred to me in different buildings across the city of Utrecht. For instance the use of colored window frames and panels (most of the time red, yellow, or blue) that recurred to me, mostly in typical Dutch 80’s architecture. When I started noticing these elements, all of a sudden they popped up everywhere I went. In photographing them, I wanted to capture them as a “pure observer”, which is a phenomenological way of approaching things or phenomena, that allows you to get to the essence of things according to philosopher Edmund Husserl.

© Daan Russcher from the series 'Phenomenology of Expressive Space'

© Daan Russcher from the series 'Phenomenology of Expressive Space'

© Daan Russcher from the series 'Phenomenology of Expressive Space'

© Daan Russcher from the series 'Phenomenology of Expressive Space'

© Daan Russcher from the series 'Phenomenology of Expressive Space'

Expressive Space refers to the way in which the urban environment with its architecture is a form of expression by architects and urban planners. In the work I made a new kind of map of Utrecht, only consisting of colored dots at the places where I came across an architectural element. The center of the map was my home, and the dots were accompanied by the distance between my home and the location I encountered and captured. The elements of the same kind would get the same color dot. By doing so I wanted to create a new layer in the map of the city I lived in: one that consisted of only architectural phenomena that caught my eye and could be linked to each other by their design or form.

Somehow the urban planning of the last 30 years, with rare exceptions, has shown us the dominance of global finance, the power to transform places, to homogenize quality. Somehow art reminds us of the faculty we have to intervene on space to make it our own differently, so as not to just suffer from it?

DR: Absolutely. I think art gives you the opportunity to take a step back, and to differentiate yourself from this homogenized world. It allows us to take control of it and form our own interpretation of it. This is why I like to work with the edges of the city in particular because they give me the feeling of escaping from the rest of the city where you will be surrounded by the influence of money and the need for renewal.

Installation view 'Material Evidence of what does not Exist' at Kunstliefde in Utrecht, soon at Galerie Pouloeuff in Naarden

Could you recommend any book with regards to those topics central in your work and practice?

DR: Artist books I recommend are Soft Copy Hard Copy by Stephan Keppel and all the books of Gerry Johansson. I also like texts and books that offer a more philosophical approach to the concepts of space and place. One of them is the book I mentioned before: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, by George Perec. Another one is Building, Dwelling, Living by Martin Heidegger, really interesting but a bit hard to read.

Daan Russcher (website)