“Bring Back the Water” YEAR
Materials
Dims

Installations
IWB Filter 4
Basel
6th – 15th June 2019

‘Bring Back the Water’ is a bespoke light installation that looks back over 100 years of history of Filter4. The building’s past as an underground drinking water reservoir is brought back as an immersive experience with light. We are presented with the expansive 800 square metres of inspirational space where the public can walk through ‘liquid light’ and get a sense of what the space used to look like when it was dark and filled with Basel’s drinking water. The artwork pays tribute to our most precious and undervalued Life source.

‘Bring Back the Water’ presents a serene contemplative space where our location becomes ambiguous. We are not sure where our body is in relation to the sandy ground as a virtual horizon cuts through us. The sand under the horizon is slightly obscured as if we are really walking through water with limited awareness of what is below the surface. We wade through a vast pool of light, curiosity is awakened, opening our senses to this unfamiliar space.

Balint Bolygo’s work reveals the hidden in our every day. He uses science, mathematics and engineering to bring about working systems that present a mesmerising world of natural phenomena: laws of gravity, optics and mechanics become the systems that shape his work, and as in many of his drawing machines often go on to make work independently.