The Fortune

The bell rings, the music starts. A merry-go-round begins to move, and we’re in it. It takes us on a bumpy rotating ride on a December morning. A view of a cheerful but ominous landscape unfolds.

We hear the characteristic fairground music, a combination of the found footage sounds Merry Go Round by Gary Edstrom and Caroussel Honfleur by Julien Nicholas. The sounds merge into a ‘distress call,’ a telephone conversation between a refugee boat and the Coast Guard, as broadcasted online by BBC News in 2016 under the title What a migrant distress call sounds like.

Meanwhile, our gaze circles Google Earth. It is December 5, 9:41:45 in the Google Earth morning. We stand behind the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security in the Google Earth-The Hague on the Google Earth Malie-Field: a much-used party ánd protest arena. The sun is just rising. The local fairground is still set up, frozen in time. Black cubes appear in the sky. The meaning of the cubes is up to the viewer.

The Fortune deliberately draws a fog curtain, making it unclear who is fortunate and unfortunate. The Fortune is an expression of impotence, of artists, of the limitless and bounded, of a digital world, freedom, and joy.

The Fortune was created for The One Minutes, curated by Quinsy Gario, with the theme Public Justice and was inspired by Kiza Magendane’s opinion article in NRC of December 2, 2017: Our conscience must not stop at the border (‘Ons geweten mag niet stoppen bij de grens’).

With this film we continue our tradition of film making in Google Earth.

The Fortune was/will be screened at:

Exodus, online exhibition Doornbugh, NL, 2023

Civility Vs. Violence, Miami New Media Festival, in collaboration with atelierWG and Arts Connection Foundation at PuntWG, Amsterdam, NL, 2022.

Shaping the Invisible World, House of Electronic Arts, Basel, Switzerland,  2021

MirgatieRoute Tettenrode, Amsterdam 7-8 juli 2018

International Short Film Festival Hamburg
9 June 2018

Moving Together, Activism, Art and Education
Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam (NL).
14 and 15 May 2018

Travelling One Minute Festival 2018:
Dortmunder U (DE)
Mu, Eindhoven (NL)
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle (NL)
Museum Hilversum (NL)
Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam (NL)
De School, Amsterdam (NL)

Ammehoela Film Festival, 31 March 2018, Amsterdam, NL
Lost&Found, Waag Society, Amsterdam, NL, 2018