top of page
An old beige rotary phone sitting on a white desk.

Départ Anticipé

Stainless steel sink with mixer tap on worktop
White pipe coiled on an industrial tiled floor.
Tiled interior staircase with green railings.
Empty corridor and abandoned office with open door.
Industrial valves and inflation gun in the workshop.
Empty office seen through a glass partition.
An old beige rotary phone sitting on a white desk.
Yellow hand truck in an industrial building.
Empty industrial workshop with machines and workstation.
Administrative files filed on an office shelf.
Laboratory equipment and files on a work surface
Industrial corridor with stairs and yellow borders.

With Départ Anticipé, I offer a reflection on what industrial transitions leave behind, on what persists when the activity withdraws but the places remain. The brutal reality of a rupture.

 

In the corridors of S20 Industries in 2018, the factory was still operating simultaneously for Brandt, other clients, and for the very first prototypes of the Bob mini-dishwasher, developed by Daan Technologies. A brief industrial cohabitation, bearing witness to a moment suspended between heritage and transformation.

 

Because the history of this factory isn't just about production. It's also marked by the slow erosion of its central role. At its peak in the 1990s, it provided a livelihood for over 2,000 people, embodying a promise of stability, local expertise, and deep roots. The gradual relocation of its activities, particularly abroad, has eroded this promise, revealing a broader, more impersonal mechanism—that of remote economic choices with very real consequences.

 

The images gathered in Early Departure invite us to feel this tension: between activity still present and departure already underway. They question how places absorb gestures, routines, absences.

 

This exhibition is neither nostalgic nor accusatory. Rather, it explores a pivotal moment, that instant when one senses that something is coming to an end. A moment when the workplace, beyond its economic function, becomes a space of memory, politics, and human fragility.

bottom of page