Drowning Cell
Cast Sea Salt, 316L Surgical Steel, Light, Custom Mechanics
'Drowning Cell' is a series of installations whose particular geographical character is the Amsterdam street Heiligeweg (Holy Way). On this site in the early 17th century, a work house for those who needed "reform" was constructed. Locally called the Rasp House, workers would grind down brazil-wood from the Dutch colonies. When ground down, it formed a red powder that was used as a paint pigment and printing dye. It is the same blood red color is used for the fluid in the windows at the "Castigatio" exhibition.
In this building existed a room omitted from Dutch history books and documented solely by foreign account. A person was placed that room. There was a hand pump. The room would slowly fill with water. The person must pump to keep from drowning. Pumping would only delay death; the prisoners would collapse from exhaustion and eventually drown. The Heiligeweg building was used as a prison until the middle of 19th century, when it then ironically became a municipal swimming pool for the next 150 years. Somewhere between drowning and dehydration; the entire space is submerged beneath sea salt. A swimming pool ladder leads to a ceiling covered in salt. The central piece, 'Cleavage Furrow' is a biological term referring to the first visible sign of cell division, a gap which bisects the cell. Constructed of sea-salt and surgical steel, a rocking chair built for two cuts away at a hexagon enclosed by a picket fence. A mechanical clock-like piece on the wall with a symbol meaning to invoke water serves as a metronome.