We have worked in Almere for several weeks now. We got to know the different moods of water surrounding us, afternoon winds, and choreographies of moving tree branches.
This week we started to share our experiences with some 'test audience'. This gave us the chance to confront our predictions with reality.
We learned a lot about the human mind. Personal feedback from the guests let us understand better what it means to experience the surrounding environment. Our role as an artist in this project is not to create but to show the beauty that is already there.
There is a lot of prosaic, tiny but also big practicalities that have to be done in order for this individual experience to happen. Maybe some of you saw us running with hands full of wood, hanging out white cloths to dry, or pushing the small wagon on the path along the beach.
We hope you will become our guest, and for now, we cherish those small encounters with your daily routines.
Read here a letter we got back from Emilia Grzeczka:
I was standing in wind, at a very wide beach, looking at water from far away. It was
just after the experience and it was the first time in my life when the notion of being
in a vertical position was so explicit to me, not obvious nor natural anymore, not
neutral and not imperceptible. I felt this position, its very particular relation to the
surrounding. It was accompanied (and caused) by the very close and strong memory
of my body being positioned horizontally in this environment with the sound of wind,
water and trees.
I was lying for quite a long, my body was being moved in this arrangement, but at
that time lying itself wasn’t the most dominating sensation and only after the action I
realised that this horizontality of experiencing body, perceiving while being parallel to
the ground and water was something which would define and connect most of my
impressions from this piece. I felt left to my own mental states, being provoked by
smelling, hearing and sensing the temperature and movement. It was raw and rough,
intense, profound, embodied and yet recalling cultural imagery. I was being prepared
for a medical procedure, being transported on the hospital bed, I was a refugee, I was
a dead body, which was ritually sent onto water, I was listening to the nature while
being in a safe and cosy tent, I was sleeping, I was vulnerable, I was an object taken
somewhere without my knowledge and consent, I was dreaming never-ending dream,
I was a baby looking up from a pram, I was a hippie waking up under a tree.
suddenly with a sublime landscape and I was hyper-aware of the vertical line my body
was constituting towards the surface of the ground.