Flap Flap

In this installation, a mechanized pole moves up and down to stimulate a large monochrome parachute canvas. As if initiating a mating dance, it starts seductively slowly, floating up and drifting down again. The pole’s rhythmic movement drives the canvas to strain and release itself from each corner, creating stroboscopic, hypnotic patterns across its surface. Gradually, the movement accelerates towards wild palpitations, almost ripping the canvas apart. It flaps, it gasps. Turbulent movement triggers tranquil ripples, testing the flexibility of the material in a rhythmic choreography.

‘Although the sound of Flap Flap at first has something of flapping, the installation soon moves so fast that with a chatter like a jackhammer it drowns out the thundering music of the party below... Due to the rapid shocks, little remains of the square surface, the patterns hypnotize; I see a desert landscape in a storm. When Vermeulen plays with the light, the orange surface seems to glow like a tropical animal that inflates to do a mating dance. The audience cheerily encourages it.’ – Lies Mensink (Cultuurpers)

‘The most impressive is the work of Philip Vermeulen (1986). His Flap Flap is a meter-sized steel frame with an orange sail in between. Motors in the four corners lower the sail and then tighten it again, while a moving tent pole in the middle quickly moves the fabric up and down. The result of this 'choreography for sail' is a hypnotic visualization as if on a large video screen.’ – Thomas van Huut (NRC handelsblad)