The Maelström Project

The Maelström project was born out of the interaction between my personal fantasy and a writer’s imagination. One of the elements is Slanting Water, the idea for which emerged during the course of an apparently unrelated late-night conversation. The piece was intended to represent an extreme case of the kind of technical problems which the artist faces. The first version comprised a fairly uncommunicative group of objects: a horizontal table-top and a glass containing slanting water. Later, the concept was realised in a more elaborated way. I placed glasses near a camera on a turning table top so that the camera captured the hydraulics of the “closed system”, the slanting water.
The other element is Edgar Allan Poe’s short story A Descent into the Maelström, which features an enormous vortex with “a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round...”. This vortex devours everything within its reach, including some unfortunate fishermen.
The Maelström Project was conceived on a somewhat smaller scale. The “vortex” is created by spinning 45 litres of motor-oil. The black liquid forms a reflective surface which curves into a parabola as a result of the spinning motion. From the moment the motor is switched on until the final velocity is reached, the surface changes constantly as the curve of the parabola becomes deeper. This results in a change in the reflected images in two clearly distinct phases, according to the properties of parabolic reflection. At first, the reflection increases in size until finally the face of the observer — if he or she is standing in the right place — fills the entire surface of the oil. After this, the reflection is inverted and rapidly grows smaller, as if a vortex were sucking down everything around it.
When the motor is switched off, this sequence takes place in reverse.

Maelström Project, motor oil, electric motor, aluminium container. 57 x 57 x 60 cm. 1995.