De Vertragende Blik

De Vertragende Blik (Slowing Down Sight): Two sculptures placed on either side of a road with the aim to slow down traffic. 1,5 years ago an open call for public art was being held in the area my workspace is in: Werkspoorkwartier. I decided to take part and team up with Taco Jansonius - an expert on ‘Natural Traffic Calming’ - to combine art and traffic control in the form of these sculptures. Natural Traffic Calming uses various methods to create an unconscious stimulus in the brain to take your foot of the gas. In comparison to traditional means used for speed control, like speed bumps, this progressive principal could be much more efficient, less costly and visually more appealing. One of the methods is to create the illusion of narrowing, and this is what we tried to create with this project. We were one of the 4 winners of the open call and got to realise our concept! As for the aesthetics, I was inspired by an old project by my sister Noraly Roozendaal/De Glitter Gladiool in which she used weeds to symbolise the organic upcoming of creative entrepreneurs in the area, and tried to give weeds a more positive connotation. I combined those elements representing the present and the future with industrial elements which represent the past of this area, that was dominated bij the production of trains by Dutch company Werkspoor. The sculptures are made out of powder coated metal and aluminium, thanks to Jeroen Vissers, Rotterdam Coating and Studio Wantia. Take a look in real life at Nijverheidsweg in Utrecht.