Creating salvaged spaces – a project in which we cut away a piece of our living space.

As human beings, we have discovered almost all of the world. We have taken possession of the world and have divided it into countries, regions, properties and lots. Land has increasingly been privatised and demarcated by hedges and walls. This is how we have appropriated, instrumentalized the planet.

BLIND SPOT is a project that aims to create symbolic reversals. Instead of building walls to claim land for man, we build walls in order to relinquish it as a possession. To decolonise! Dis-possession is a nice way of putting it. We strip sections of land of any human activity. We place ourselves outside the walls.

A wall construction is used to demarcate a piece of land. A space is enclosed. The in-between space is a product of the very construction. It can no longer be entered by a human being and can only be perceived through small openings between the walls. Not everything remains visible since there are blind spots that can only be filled with the Imaginary. It may very well accommodate the Uncanny as well. We reduce our living space and expand it with the Unknown.

These sculptures are built upon the promise never to set foot on the lost/gained ground again. A piece of land is relinquished and an architectural structure is built in its place.

A BLIND SPOT around which the world of man continues to unfold.

Along the side of Leuvenstraat, as soon as one approaches the driveway of the former military domain ‘De Citadel’, one is confronted with an impressive work of art by Henk Delabie. His Blind Spot Diest, commissioned by the city, rises straight up against the remains of the 19th century brick city wall, a segment of the Leuven city gate that used to be part of the former city walls. The stately concrete creation questions its contextual surroundings with which it connects to become a unique landmark.

Read full text: Blind Spot V, Diest