A huge round screen hangs from an old tree in the Vondelpark near the Dutch Film museum in Amsterdam. The tree watches over the screen and the images projected on it; the thick branch were it hangs from is like a protective arm around it. The tree is a silent witness of the event: the projections; the viewers; the Film museum. But also of all the passers-by, the joggers, the skaters, the dogs, the demonstrations, the historical events during the last 100 years at least since it has been planted there somewhere during the creation of the park around the late 19th century. But its not just the tree that watches over the images, they themselves give light and colours to the tree. It suddenly lights up or becomes red like the fire on the screen.

The projection on the screen is a mix of newly made images, footage from the artists personal archives and images from their personal choice of cinema. Image and sound are not synchronous and appear in different combinations during the projection. It’s a remix of media, history, cinema and culture. Apart from an ‘homage to the tree’ the works seems to be an homage to history, but non-linear history. An homage to recycling of culture, ideas, experiences, sounds, images.

The tree sees it all, keeps all the memories, but the tree also becomes a house, fire, a book. A book that again contains stories, memories, history.

The artists created this work for the first time in the Botanical Garden in Montreal, Canada. Day for night is however an in situ work that cannot simply be reinstalled somewhere else. The images and sounds have a relation with the immediate surroundings. For the Vondelpark they created Day for night II with new footage inserted; sounds of local birds, images from the pond in the park. Like always when Stansfield & Hooykaas make a work for a public environment they take great care of the relation of the work with its surroundings. It only exists there and then.

The title of the work Day for night, or ‘the American night’ is derived from the name of an American procedure when night scenes are filmed during the day and filters create a nightly atmosphere and of course Truffaut’s ‘Nuit Americain’ can be recognised in some of the images.

Lilet Breddels