Fossil Locomotion (Floris Vanhoof, 2018)
This installation plays with the dimension of time: Fossils that were lying still for 750 million years start to move again through flickerings of a fraction of a second. Imaginary motion studies of my family’s fossil collection in 81 sequences of 4 slides. The illusion of movement is created by means of a rotating disk, 4 slide projectors and a soundtrack. The flickering animation arises because of the rotating disc lets the light through from one of the slide projectors at the time. – Floris Vanhoof
The method lies in alternately zooming in and out. One example of this in Vanhoof’s body of work is Fossil Locomotion, which focuses on the fossils his family has been collecting over the past decades. Blow-ups of different fossils merge within a single second in a slide carousel. The subject matter is both close to home and spanning Deep Time, stemming from amateur paleontologism, but conveying a message far beyond it by animating something that is inherently immobile, then again compressing it into micro time slots. The core question that sparks the piece is a childlike one: ‘What if these fossils could move again?’” – Steve Marreyt
