Emma van der Put ©

  1. Passage III (Next Gen) (2025) Emma van der Put
    Passage III (Next Gen) (2025) Emma van der Put

    Passage III (Next Gen) 
    Emma van der Put (due in 2026)
    HD video

    Passage III (Next Gen) (2026) is the final part of the Passage trilogy. In this film the focus lies on the European district of Brussels, an area largely comprised of mirroring glass facades, where voices of protesters that regularly flare up and then fade out, echo through the streets via remnants of signages, stickers and graffiti.

    As with the earlier Passage works, the film Passage III (Next Gen) looks into the specific usage of the visual language that can be found within this public space and how it reveals certain wishes and desires surrounding our relationship to past, present and future. 

    In the European district a remarkable temporal conversation is unfolding. The exclamations of protest that are present in the streets speak about what should be improved in the here and now, they are voices of critique demanding change. The visual language voiced by the different EU institutions, appear to be unshaken by these reverberating exclamations, and are mainly responding with open questions ’What are you doing for a better future?’ or declarations ‘Make your voice heard’, that seemingly intent to place the power of change in the hands of the passerby.

    Within this feedback loop the question arises how to have a conversation between a multitude of voices that speak on different scales, and in different dimensions of time?

     

  2. Passage I, II, III

    The Passage trilogy (2021 - 2025) consists of a series of films in which Emma van der Put reflects on three different area’s of Brussels: the commercial centre of the city, which is shaped around the 19th century shopping arcade ‘Galerie Royal’, the former industrial ‘Zone-Canal’, where large-scale urban developments are currently taking place and the European Quarter, where the political centre of the city is situated. All three of these locations have their origins in the urban developments of Brussels in the 19th century, from that moment on these parts of the city were further modelled, assigned and structured in accordance with their particular function, objective and agenda. 

    In this longterm research, Van der Put observes how each location, departing from its specific purpose and ambition, is shaping the dynamics of the site and the significance of (visual) language present in these three public environments. When traversing these areas of the city, there is a sense of being guided, being consistently noticed and addressed. 

    The Passage series aims to reflect on the specific experience of being a passer-by within these different public environments. Over the course of years, Van der Put collected an archive of material, making numerous repetitive walks within these specific areas of the city. In the films, she seeks to translate both the physiological and psychological experience of passing through these sites. 

    Departing from the photographic archive that Van der Put shot, her editing brings movement to the still images that she captured by slowly scanning over the photographs, guiding the viewer from space to space, picking up on details, scraps and fragments, that assemble through the passing of time.