Marnehuizen (NL)

Film Installation

2005

Marnehuizen, photo Marjolijn Dijkman (2005)

Urban Trainings Centre Marnehuizen is the largest military practice setting in Europe. This ‘practice’ village counts 122 houses and a real infrastructure like an ordinary Dutch village and is located hidden within a nature reserve in the north of the Netherlands.

The constructed ruins and architecture remind me of many newly built domestic areas in the Netherlands. The village consists of houses, a railway station, a city hall, a bank, a supermarket, a gas station, an industrial zone, and an underground sewer system. The names of the streets in Marnehuizen refer to the bombed streets in the center of Rotterdam (WOII).

In the video work Marnehuizen (NL), the camera slowly enters the village into the night and crosses the deserted village setting in one long, uninterrupted camera movement.

Marnehuizen (NL)
Directed by: Marjolijn Dijkman
Camera: Harmen van Eersel
Edited by: Harmen van Eersel and Marjolijn Dijkman
Music by: Jóhann Jóhannsson
Duration: 11:45 min.
Format: 4:3, DVD, stereo

Thanks to: Sergeant major D. Wassenaar, Willem Lodewijk van Nassau Barracks

Still of Marnehuizen (NL)
Still of Marnehuizen (NL)
Still of Marnehuizen (NL)