Panta Rei

Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher from Efeze, talked about unity of opposite parts. In other words you don’t argue with someone who tells you the bottle is half full while you think it is half empty.

He also thought nothing in our world stays the same. Things appear in all different ways, they chance in time and eventually disappear. This counts not only for us, but also for all things in universe and maybe for universe itself. All things we think about are in fact instable objects, constantly developing. Heraclitus compared them with flames, they look like objects, but in reality are a process.

Heraclitus contradicted the comforting thought that things are stable and permanent. Life itself and the universe never stop changing. This law of change reigns everywhere. You can’t escape.

The art-project Panta Rei is a research about the never ending change in a city. A city is a chain of buildings, all different in shape, design and size. Every building has its own purpose. To keep a city up and running is a complex business, an ever on-going process. A building once built for a special purpose, will be used differently when the next owner moves in.

There are always building-projects going on in the city. They seem binding links in the real development of a city. At the same time the building work is hidden from us by colourful building clothes. So Heraciltes inescapable law is visualized by making an inventory of and showing building sites hidden by the colourful cloth.