BROCKENSPOOK
“The closer the mountains, the bigger their shadow”,
(Karoline von Günderrode)
Light installation, Brockenspook | metal plate, halogen lamp, Alpine Hotel Castell, Zuoz, CH, 1997
The “Brockenspook”, a rarely seen light phenomenon, once took me by surprise high up in the Grison Alps. I was on my skis, the sun in my back and thick rising fog in front of me.
A gigantic dark figure with long scary limbs, surrounded by a halo in all the colours of the spectrum suddenly appeared on the wall of fog: a ghostly copy of myself in the form of a shadow.
I was fascinated by an alpine rock sign from the Bronze Age showing a sorcerer in action.
I cut out his image from metal plate as a stencil for the projection. This oversized projection, together with the larger-than-life image of a granite stone on the other side, acts as a sentinel on the floor of the alpine hotel.
Commissioned by Ruedi Bechtler for the Alpine Hotel Castell, Zuoz, Switzerland.
