Commissioned by De Douane for Het Douane Laboratorium Amsterdam, in collaboration with Yana Khazanovich.

Making Matter II is a site-specific short film that explores the history, function and mystique of Het Douane Laboratorium in Amsterdam. De Douane (the Dutch customs) is one of the oldest Dutch national services, originating from 1597 to raise taxes to help finance the naval forces during the Eighty Years' War (1586-1648). In order to research exactly what kind of substances are shipped across the Dutch borders the Douane has had its own laboratory since 1880.

In the lab imported objects are subjected to scientific demolition; they're crushed, cut, separated, ground up, dissolved and spun around to be analyzed on a molecular level. What is stuff made up of? Even the most common household objects are, in a way, illuminated by this process. The laboratory is not much unlike a mysterious site that could be found in nautical folklore. Here, objects come to die and be turned into guiding star dust.

For the work Yana Khazanovich interviewed 4 people about personally meaningful objects they possess, which she turned into a short documentary. These objects, ranging from a striped t-shirt to a silver necklace, were the subjects for our video works.

The work features extensive photogrammetry scans of the entire lab in order to re-imagine the space for the story. The film chronicles the origin of all matter through the destruction of these personal objects in the lab.‍