THE THIRD CHAMBER (Artistbook, Translation: Roy Bicknell, Amsterdam, published by Salon Verlag, Cologne, 1997) 0. Artificial Heart "Camouflage" is said to be conveniently used by Nature when the risk of being discovered is too great. Clad in fine garments of green luxuriance, of striking elegance or earthy tones, she has her safe haven from the prying eyes of biochemists, biomimeticians and other intruders. However, behind all this play with beauty she hides her true face: cruelty. When you observe Nature without any Rousseauist yearning, you see that this two-faced aspect invests all natural phenomena. Attributing a benign or malignant influence to Nature is, just like any cultural interest, subject to the whims of fashion. Ten years ago we still favored the Sadean tendency which presupposes, with cynical standoffishness, that human and animal suffering is a basic fact of life. Today we see Rousseau's and de Sades' attitudes as two sides of the same coin and we hardly take heed of the paradoxes, which appear in their distictive worlds of thougt. Thus is our attitude towards Nature based on the profound recognition, that what we call Nature has already been "cultivated" many times and must, time and time again, be put in perspective. 1. Plankton Like the module of a space station the model floats through the darkness of space. In its centre a cistern lies embedded in an incline. At the pond's edge stand sculptures which - inspired by the plankton micro-world - indicate the animate protoplasm of the water. Swathed in shimmering spawn, the plankton drifts as it is borne along by the movement of the water. 2. Aggregate Not only the stringing together of the visual ideas but their embedding in a systematic configuration has been revealed to us as a method. The process of embracing these ideas we illustrate by using the emblematic concept of the "The Third Chamber". 3. Weed "The Third Chamber" opens the door to a domain that we call the "garden". This garden finds its origin in the microscopic widening of an interspace, which grows out of the seam in an asphalt fault. From this interspace sprouts the weed that nourishes our images. 4. In the joints To conceive gardens on unbuilt surfaces seems a luxury. Planted out of the metropolitan wastelands, the garden serves as a cipher of reconciliation. We see in this an opportunity to link up with the historical moment, when painting influenced landscape gardening and horticulture led to new motifs in painting. 5. Asphalt fault In 1725, asphalt was, after centuries of oblivion, used as sealing material for a leaking pond in a "jardin d'intelligence" of Louis XV and its impermeability to water was given the "Royal seal of approval". In the meantime asphalt has, with its tarmac roads, conquered the heart of our cities. The access to open soil seems to be more difficult than ever. We see cracks in the asphalt surface as metaphoric places for the flourishing of fictive garden constructions, the realisation of which is primarily of interest to us on the level of the "observable" model. 6. The passable image These gardens are planned to be inaccessible. Only gardeners are allowed access to their inner cells. As part of a set experiment, we imagine this almost anthropofugal attitude, which provides simulators as a counterpoint to the direct denial of experience, so that the visitor himself can virtually stage different walk-rounds through the garden. 7. The invisible torch Our "soil" is formed by the conceptual space of Utopia. Painting opens up tabooed spaces and gives them public value. Our conviction is that painting, beyond abstractionism and beyond the autonomous gesture, can follow an assignment and beyond meaning - even when the content is freely determined - undergo innovation. The search for ways to achieve this seems to us now to be the greatest artistic challenge. 8.The true floral gardener Statements of the four floral gardeners: The first one: "The entire world may be built in the farthest corner of the garden, the place of electrified childlike fantasy." The second one: "The farthest corner of the garden is the starting point for the conception of the image, the place of desire and dreams in childhood, which today provides us with new visual ideas." The third one: "The farthest corner of the garden has been created from unique plants, which emphasize its meaning as a place for stimulating the flow of images." The fourth one: "The farthest corner of the garden must be shown and mediated as the place of the lost paradise of childhood." 9. The pomological cabinet Not only botanical wax models are to be found in the collections, extinct plants are recultivated here too, and knowledge about them collected and evaluated. The breeding station is a "greenroom" of the "Third Chamber", a place for searching and inspiration. Here people are gathered, who serve the garden. 10. Flow model The representation of a creative process, which first provides garden designs which have been grafted on reality and then unites metaphors of itself and of the conceived event in a structure - the flow model is used for this representation. Images come and go, disclose and withdraw meaning. Arbitrarily, meaning is, during its passage, extracted and incorporated in the grid of the games' board.