Torentje van Drienerlo
The Torentje van Drienerlo is a 1979 artwork by Dutch artist Wim T. Schippers, located on the campus of the University of Twente in Enschede.
Description
Schippers made the tower long after he had left a career in visual arts for television. In the 1960s, he was associated with the Fluxus movement and had gained a reputation for absurdist and controversial works of art, including the famous Pindakaasvloer, consisting basically of a floor covered with peanut butter. He worked on short films as well, with Wim van der Linden and others, but his relations with the established art world were troubled and by the early 1970s he was working almost exclusively on writing and making television shows for the VPRO—Schippers referred to television as "the greatest gallery in the world".The work of art consists of the spire of a church tower rising up just above the surface of a pond, suggesting that the church itself has sunken deeply. This partly mysterious quality was Schippers' goal, and was supposed to bring life to the college campus.
On the occasion of Schippers' seventieth birthday, a replica of the tower was revealed in Kortrickvijver, near the Willy Dobbeplantsoen in Olst. The replica, like the Willy Dobbeplantsoen, was made by the "Gentlemen's Society" De Nuts Neut. In February 2013 the tower had been moved to an area in between the summer- and winter dikes of the IJssel river, an area that promptly flooded.