“Mind the Gap” was housed in one of the small pavilions bordering Kings Garden in Copenhagen. The room was bare. Empty and white, but at the same time filled with a strong light and sound. The empty space, the space that can never be entered, since it would no longer be empty, was ominous, singing a deep tone so that the building was almost resonant with it. The light was blue and moved with the sound. When one entered the room, its mood changed, the light became clear, almost sunny, the sounds addressed the entrant. The words were a collage of texts written by the politician Ritt Bjerregaard, the poet Thomas Boberg and the Spanish critic Esteban Pujals on the basis of the key words “here” and “now”. There was a whispering voice for the political text, a declamatory voice for the poetic text and a manipulated voice for the critics statements of “ready-mades”. “Mind the Gap” was a multimedia work, digitally produced and controlled. At the same time it was in itself an appropriated ready-made, a piece of reality exposed to minimal alterations.
The complex sound picture was created in collaboration with the composer Morten Carlsen. It was made up of a meditative, soft and sleepy rise and fall which was suddenly interrupted by the roar of an approaching train and a strident MIND THE GAP. Sound and text were randomly controlled so that each new visitor experienced a specific pattern. An initial sense of feeling at home in the house was mercilessly shattered by the warning that one constantly hears as one enters a train from a London underground platform.
The installation was in itself a gap, a hole in the busy city. One fell into it and one left it. But there was no access to the secrets of the installation. When one closed the door on leaving, the room closed itself around its singing tone.There is something one never grasps. It is impossible to possess both the place and what the place does. We never arrive.