Overbruggen is a year-long, site-specific installation created for one of the glass elevator shafts of the Paleisbrug in ’s-Hertogenbosch, connecting the medieval city centre with the modern Paleiskwartier. Elevated above the railway, the bridge includes a public park designed by landscape architect Piet Oudolf. It functions as both a transit route and a public space that offers a momentary interruption.
The work explores the notion of connection within a context of societal division. Gaston Bachelard once wrote that “the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” He suggests that comfort is a condition for imagination, a prerequisite for dreaming about a better future for oneself.
The cloud-like forms in the installation reference personal memories of watching drifting clouds in the Dutch sky, a symbol for dreaming. The work questions who has access to that privilege, and how this access is shifting over time. The ability to imagine a better city, or a better world, depends on safety and stability, conditions that are not equally distributed.
The installation uses softness and ephemerality to counterbalance the infrastructure’s hard materials and constant flow. It offers a quiet gesture, a moment of space, of pause and of possibility.
