The Re-occupied Bunker
With the project The Reoccupied Bunker, artists Inge Tranter and Morten Poulsen, together with children and young people from North Jutland, reoccupied a WWII bunker with an installation based on the surroundings around bunker no.42 in Hirtshals, Denmark.
Using a very simple drawing task, the installation shows how our perception of reality is influenced by the word selection in the description of a person, an object or concept. Children were presented with a list of plant names from Danish nature and were given the task of making a drawing of the plant they believed it belonged to. These “fantasy plants” were then interpreted as sculptures by young people from North Jutland and hung upside down in the bunker, a mirroring and distortion of the beautiful nature in the surroundings around the bunker.
The sculptural installation is accompanied by a sound piece which is based on field recordings from the nature surrounding the bunkers; the sound of wind in the bushes and high grass, and the sound of the bunkers’ own construction. The work plays with the idea of territory as not just a geographical but also a sonic and mental entity; a territory mapped through sound.
