Blind Date

2010

The installation ‘Blind Date’ is about communication, about expectations people have about relationships and their impossibility.
In the current communication era we have become addicted to all kinds of forms of communication. In search of contact, we participate in organized ‘blind dates’, but at the same time it is becoming more and more difficult to really make contact with each other. We still try to say hello to each other in the street, a habit that is already disappearing in the centres of big cities. A conversation with an acquaintance or a stranger often starts with a chat about the weather.
Reports about the weather are of vital importance in a rural society or in a community of fishermen. But in our urban environment they are made subservient to the leisure industry and to greeting rituals. They enable people to make contact with each other safely.
In ‘Blind Date’ the elements of ‘encounter’ and ‘the weather’ are combined into an installation. Weather reports and texts about the weather form the connecting thread in the project. They are scenarios for starting a conversation.

Blind Date was generously supported by FBKVB.

Photo's Thomas Lenden, Amsterdam.