Ready to lose control
2013
Temporary installation for Festival Verborgen Landschap






At first glance, this building resembles a traditional Veluwe farmhouse. But upon closer inspection, the structure is a sham. This is one of the "Zeven Provinciën"—bunkers built by the German Luftwaffe at Deelen Air Base during World War II, disguised as farmhouses to deceive aerial reconnaissance. After the war, the Dutch army took over the site. The bunkers remained in use until the end of the Cold War, after which they stood idle for decades: closed off, sealed, forgotten.
Ready to Lose Control (2013) responded to this disguised architecture of control. In one of the bunker farmhouses, I opened the windows and doors for the first time in 25 years—once boarded up to keep squatters out—and brought nature inside. Black tree trunks penetrated the interior through open windows and passageways, like a slowly advancing force. Light, wind, and rain returned to the tranquil building. Inside became outside. The closed structure breathed again, but also lost its grip. This intervention posed a fundamental question: what happens when you let go of what was once controlled to perfection?
Ready to Lose Control made palpable the tension between camouflage and revelation, between military precision and natural surrender. It was a performative sculpture of wood and air, of silence and history—a space that no longer concealed, but exposed.
After this project, the former bunkers were redeveloped as houses and today a family inhabits this space.
“Ready to Lose Control is a powerful work in which history, camouflage, control, and nature collide. The building is literally a disguised structure: a war bunker disguised as a farmhouse, designed to deceive. The intervention—opening the windows and bringing nature inside—makes that past tangible and tilts the building from closed to open, from controlled to vulnerable” - Stichting GANG.
Ready to lose control
2013
36 trunks, ink
The trunks were donated to a local scouting club after this project
Commissioned by the GANG Foundation for the Verborgen Landschap Festival