Barbara Kletter, 2008

Location: De Fontein primary school, Laan van Wateringse Veld 462, The Hague

Visual artist Barbara Kletter designed an interactive artwork for the central hall of primary school De Fontein in The Hague, which will be brought to life by pupils of the school. The artwork was realised under the municipal scheme ‘art in schools’ and was supervised by Stroom Den Haag.

'Encounter'
The work consists of two sculptures - of a a boy and a girl - performing a dynamic choreography on a disc and over a track along the wall. The boy and girl can each be set in motion separately by means of two push buttons; the sculptures thus ‘slide’ towards each other, tightrope dance away from each other or turn pirouettes on their own axis. The ‘dance’ can be stopped at any position, creating a different composition in the space each time.

The artwork at De Fontein in Wateringse Veld refers to the movement, growth and social development that everyone experiences at school. In the choreography, anything can be projected; a game of encounter and movement, the connection between two people, or between two worlds. The image is never static but constantly takes on new, changing guises.

Barbara Kletter (1960)
Movement and technique are a recurrent theme in Kletter's oeuvre. For the two classrooms of the technology pavilion of Koninklijke Scholengemeenschap Apeldoorn, for instance, she made two flying machines entitled ‘Opgepast Vliegende Leerlingen!’, where pupils could literally and figuratively experience movement and technology. For childcare centre Bengel in Maassluis, she made a ‘fleet’ of four stainless steel vehicles on wheels. For the Spaarne Hospital in Hoofddorp, she made a series of human-figurative sculptures that can be set in motion manually by patients or visitors.