We have finished our first kinetic chapel on the island of Rab, Croatia.
The installation is as a gesture of reconciliation – personal as well as communal. It is also a commemoration of our grandmother Dorica, who taught us nonconformism; and to appreciate paradox.
Reconciliation lies within the fact that all who participated in making this chapel are themselves paradoxes: progressives and traditionalists at the same time, and fairly complex side characters in a story that has long been unfolding.
The practice of faith establishes a narrative space within the mind of the believer; each day of the calendar or even each decade of the Rosary has a special character or scene ascribed to it. The believer ponders upon these images, creating meaning through ongoing recollections of sequential imagery.
Places are given names according to churches and chapels built to commemorate the protagonists of the faith. Thus we end up with a *narrative topography* giving meaning and orientation in both time and space. It is exactly this (and not the false security of traditions nor the anaesthesia of the dogmas) that begs for a practical continuation in our times.
The chapel features an animated saint, developed through stop-motion technique using sequences of film negatives exposed through a large-format pinhole camera. The kinetic chapel is powered entirely by solar power.