the fear in infrastructure

those who have ever seen 'irreversible' by gaspard noe will probably remember the eerie rape scene in the tunnel under the street. next to it being a gripping scene that left you sick and disgusted with mankind - great acting, one shot only, oh my god you get the point - it perfectly illustrates the scary thing with infrastructure.

linear infrastructure that is.

you see, the annoying thing with long, enclosed lines of movement like tunnels, but also trains, is that you can see the exit, but you're not there yet. and anything can happen on the way there. well, they tell you anything can happen. of course no ghouls will jump out of the walls or paratroopers will descent through a freshy blown hole in the ceiling, but you never know.

man is prone to fear. fear of not having any options left. perhaps an analogy with a famous computer game is at its place here. we all know pacman. heck, pacman has been an essential part of many 80s youngsters youth. either at home or in the arcade, we all tried to eat all the balls and avoid getting caught by the ghosts. however, we were always given an overview of the game map, indicating where the ghosts were, instead imagine a 3D version of pacman. you are running through endless hallways, all exactly alike, and you don't know what is either behind or ahead of you. you just have an arrow indicating where the exit (kind of) is. this fear (i can already see myself doing this in a nightmare) of infrastructure as an exponent of fear is something i aim to investigate. can infrastructure dissolve fear? is visibility enough?

let's call it infearstructure.

but there is hope: just think about the light at the end of the tunnel - or, as two famous dutch comicbook characters (a duck and a canary) once said: 'and at the end of the tunnel, one big tropical swimming pool!'