When I Stopped Reading Fiction And Started Watching History is an interactive installation in the shape of a surveillance room. In this archetypical room a 10-screen matrix is presented to the spectator providing images that seem to originate from different periods of world history. Through a control panel the viewer can zoom in on the images, overhear conversations, change camera positions,... History is being put under camera surveillance.

When I Stopped… is a desperate multi-screen search to history’s plot, in the margin of the contemporary free time industry. The installation images are shot at different large-scale re-enactments of historic battles. The participants try to bring history back to life as realistically as possible. Re-enacting and reliving the past transforms history to something you can experience yourself, to something that is alive and authentic. They are both an answer to the mediatised world, in which we tend to experience more and more through a (computer)screen, as a reaction to the fictionalization of the past in Hollywood films. But to which extent is it possible to create an authentic image of the past? The re-enactments eventually tell us more about our time than about history.

concept, interactive programming, video Kurt d' Haeseleer
design surveillance room, interactive programming Peter Missotten
voice over Nicole Oliver, Lucas Tavernier
assistance Bérengère Bodin
music TUK

a production by Filmfabriek vzw
supported by de Vlaamse Gemeenschap en STUK / Artefact