If we watch long enough

Berg van Barmhartigheid
Ghent, Belgium
2022

If we watch long enough, 2023
PVC window film
Berg van Barmhartigheid , Ghent, Belgium

A thermal camera was used to capture the radiation emitted from the window’s surface on a sunny day. Multiple images of the entire glass surface were collected, one for each pane of glass, and then printed on PVC sticker film. These printed films were reapplied to the window, each aligned with the corresponding measured area.

This translucent material allows light from outside to color the hall’s interior with shades derived from the thermal imaging of that particular summer day. The window carries traces of its former self, and the sunlight that once unsettled the thermal camera continues as the steady force that illuminates the interior.

Here, the act of measuring interferes, imprints, and leaves behind traces that shape what is observed. The window is entangled with its apparatus of measurement, transformed into a layered surface, at once itself and its record, past and present, doubled by its own capture.