The film that's projected from the toy 'Beam Bus' onto a cut out, 4:3 section of the Panorama Mesdag book. ( 5 min. 23 sec's) 

Installing 'Panorama Mesdag' into the back of the real beam bus. Photo: Theo Mahieu

There is a section cut out of the book so that projector fits iniside. The 4:3 cut out flap that forms the screen is simply folded back at 90 degrees to the image projected from the toy van. Photo: Eric van Straaten

​Jacqueline Heerema (Badgast coordinator) gave me a box with some old reviews from previous artists at Badgast to look through. I found evidence of a project by Bram Esser-a previous art piece called “Panorama Badgast”. It was a parody of the 'Panorama Mesdag' which I had never heard of. In fact I thought that the photograph of the panorama Mesdag that 'Esser' had included in his review was something that he had faked. I wrongly assumed that he had used an image of the Panorama at Waterloo- Belgium (Which I had heard of because I’m English) and a photograph of the beach at Scheveningen and put the two together in photo shop. I couldn’t read the accompanying Dutch text so it was only when I met Bram Esser that he explained to me that it was a real Panorama.

Panorama Waterloo

Panorama Mesdag

​I always assumed that a life size panorama gave the viewer an experience of something they couldn't get in real life. Therefore I found it difficult to comprehend of a panorama being made of a beach that was only a 10 minute tram ride away. On a visit to the panorama Mesdag museum in Den Haag, I bought an exhibition catalogue book. This, in a sense, represented one of many layers of real and unreal.

I took the book and a kite to the beach where Mesdag must have painted the panorama from. The entire beach front is being redeveloped so I could not get exactly where he would have been because the area is fenced off. I think I was quite close. I made a paper aeroplane from the double page pull out of the panorama in the book and launched it from my kite with a small lightweight toy van (Beam bus) fixed to it. 

Toy van fixed to paper aeroplane.

​As with the other pieces, it was important to show the van disappearing in the film but retrieve it afterwards so that I could create my visual paradox (ie. By using the toy van to project the film from). Despite the fact that I could probably buy an identical toy van on the internet, I believed it was vital to use the original for the sake of integrity and authenticity.

As the paper aeroplane was launched from the kite it slowly glided down and fell into the water. It floated on the surface but an offshore wind gently started to take it out to sea. I was forced to put down the camera, take off my clothes and jump in to swim after it. I quickly reached a point where I wasn’t sure that if I carried on chasing it I would have enough energy to make it back to the beach. I gave up and swam back to land.

​Photo: Nicoletta Van Doorn.- kite

​Later, standing on the beach, semi naked and exhausted, I realised I had become fixated on the authentication of the object. I also realised that this obsession didn’t make any difference to the viewer at all. Another similar red van would do as no-one would know the difference apart from me. In the past I have been adamant that the genuine authentic object was sacrosanct. I knew now, for a fact, that deep down I didn’t think this detail was as important either – it certainly wasn’t worth dying for like a stupid tourist.

I never felt in danger in the Antarctic despite its reputation for being a hostile environment. It was therefore particularly strange to find myself standing on the beach at Scheveningen after this event wondering how such an innocent activity as flying a kite suddenly became so potentially life threatening.