This past Sunday 8 February started very early for Latitudes – we were on the beach of the Maasvlakte, Rotterdam, before first light with cameraman Fijko van Leeuwen in readiness for the filming of the new 2009 version (forty years later to the month) of Jan Dibbets' 1969 '12 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective' (see previous post here). The resulting film, titled '6 Hours Tide Object with Correction of Perspective' is the first of Portscapes projects, commissioned by the Port of Rotterdam in collaboration with SKOR and curated by Latitudes.

Soon after Dibbets and Theo Tegelaers from SKOR arrived and, with bulldozer driver Jan Vader at the ready and van Leeuwen up on the hydraulic lift, the 'square' was marked out and the camera was ready to roll.

A bus with special guests and press arrived just in time to see the beginning of the raking action, and after a brief hail storm, the tide rose rapidly on cue around 12.30 to inundate the 'perspective correction'. A spectacular morning on the Dutch coast! Many thanks to everyone involved.


Critic Rutger Pontzen wrote about the event in the Dutch paper De Volkskrant and Ruud van Haastrecht's article appeared in Trouw (articles below). Also see features in Schuttevaer, BM/DeStem and Metropolis M.

NRC Handelsblad published a good "making of" slideshow here.


The event was photographed for the Port of Rotterdam by Freek van Arkel and for SKOR by Paloma Polo. Our big thanks to both!

More on Latitudes website including details of the screenings of the resultant film (in Summer 09 – see post here).

You may see the 'making of' film here (part 1) and here (part 2).