Triptych
life versus art
I
North
500 Kilometres north of Paris one finds the Notre Dame.
On the largest artificial island in the world, the land with little history, the land where I was born, trees rise: a cathedral.
Not unlike absinthe, the green aims to overwhelm.
It was my birthday. The day I turned 25, in perspective only seconds younger as the land from which the cathedral rises.
I walked into the heart of nature carefully crafted into one of the icons of a city not belonging to this country.
The first and only time I drank absinthe I was left disappointed. Not a single green fairy. Rather: nothing.
Now I stood in the heart of God’s home, created by the forces of his brethren with that what Ishtar, or perhaps Ymir, once bestowed upon us.
I drank absinthe at the Karl Marx Allee, once the Stalinallee. Berlin, a city where to expect such a cathedral, though there it would have sprung from history where now its existence owes gratitude to curiosity and innovation.
From the north of Paris a boat took us downtown along the Seine. Around me every language found in Europe; I understood many words with little success. We never arrived at the Notre Dame; instead we indulged in the pleasures of heathens.
Inside the faux British of American pop music, outside champagne among broken English; our flutes now the home to whatever life one finds at the bottom of that gritty Parisian river.
It was better than absinthe in Berlin.
I lay down and looked into the sky. North from the human perspective. The blue of the sky cluttered with the green of the tree tops. Still hope. Still dreams. Drunk without alcohol.
Sheltered by faith here so simply destroyed by a mere gust.
Central in The Netherlands one finds the province of Flevoland, reclaimed in the 50’s and the 60’s from the Zuiderzee (‘southern sea’) it knows little history. It is the land where I was born. The province is, by far, the largest artificial island in the world and boasts the highest density of land art globally.
Among the works one finds De Groene Kathedraal (‘The Green Cathedral’), a piece by Marinus Boezem. Located near the city Almere, the Lombardy poplars are planted according to the ground plan of the Reins Notre Dame. It was originally created in 1978, though because of various storms several trees have been replaced overtime.
II
Savant Running
Run boy run! This world is not made for you
Run boy run! They’re trying to catch you
Run boy run! Running is a victory
Run boy run! Beauty lays behind the hills
Woodkid, Run Boy Run
Walking on water; only one is said to have ever done so.
I ran. I ran over the waves.
The savant no idiot, for the waves he runs, he fails to understand the trembles of life.
The savant no idiot, he watches ebb’s waves crash onto the shore.
For the waves he runs.
Running. Running. Running.
Run boy run.
It may take a seabed to stop him.
Tomorrow is another day
And when the night fades away
You’ll be a man, boy
But for now it’s time to run, it’s time to run
Aardzee (Earth Sea) is a landart piece by the Dutch artist Piet Slegers. It was erected in 1982 and, measuring 5 hectares, is the biggest work of art in The Netherlands.
In the middle of the vast polder landscape of the province of Flevoland earth suddenly rises. Surrounded by similar plots used as farmland, here a sea emerges; a sea from earth, concrete and shells.
As one sits atop the undulations, the rustle of the leaves of the poplar trees resembles the murmur of the waves.
The artwork pays respect to the history of its location: this sea is a reminder of the Zuiderzee, the sea once found here before the land was reclaimed.
III
Not Without Dusk
I didn’t really understand where we were. Through a large opening I looked at the vast polder landscape. Is this it? Just outside the earthen walls I can see this too. I see this everywhere I go. This is the landscape right outside our village.
As I returned to our hotel room she wore only her night robe. The lights were dimmed. Tired, eyes blurred by the hustle and bustle of the day, I wanted to sleep.
He walked back in and looked concerned. I asked if everything was alright. He just spoke with his girlfriend on the phone; she missed him. Another girl missed me, though I was right there.
She dropped her robe, her nude body suddenly exposed. I apologised and walked out of the room. It is alright, she said later, as we were unable to catch sleep.
It was a place of ritual where history did not yet exist. Now in the centre I walked back through the tunnel allowing an escape from the inner concentric wall. I climbed upon the outer wall and sat down in its grass.
The sunshine in the polder, that on a winter’s day, has a sense of surrealism, perhaps magic realism, one is unable to grasp elsewhere. The horizon flat, endless; as dull as it is soothing.
I couldn’t live that life anymore.
She was convinced he was gay, her boyfriend was gay. As I met him I understood her doubt. She thought he was in love with me, yet I instantly knew that not to be truth.
It is in the nothing where anything can happen. It is as simple as two steel plates placed to create a visor where the sunrise can become a spectacle. Just make sure to be there at the right moment. It is there and then that magic is no longer unattainable. It is there and then that it is real. It is there and then the mundane becomes the spectacle.
They flirt, they dance, they may even kiss yet it is nothing but a testimony of them being comfortable who they are. The music pounding, I shouted into my friend’s ear she had nothing to worry.
I was not like him. Again I had a girlfriend. Useless despite her beauty, her wit, her charm. As I witnessed her body I was nothing but a witness.
In the dark we arrived. The bonfires no longer there. Little later dawn arrived too, between the steel plates a source of life, of joy to so many, casted its first rays among the people. The didgeridoo pounding, echoing, awakening the crowd. We danced, we shouted, with little understanding.
I brought her home. Our embrace was the return to being friends, though we did not yet admit to our newfound truth.
Years later I returned. I came to see its beauty, cleverly disguised for those who do not wish to see.
As we danced, she ecstatic her boyfriend did want her and I once more left desolated among my peers, I was tapped on the shoulder. Wondering what he was doing there, on a night where orientations were tested and confirmed, he told me it had been a lie. A lie just like mine, he said, although my girlfriend had been real. Reluctant to accept where we stood we kissed. He was like me.
For hours I could sit on the earthen walls, walk around, catch the views through the large openings. The world was so simple here.
This time he called me. It couldn’t be. He had asked God. It couldn’t be.
The artwork described in this story is the Robert Morris Observatorium (‘observatory’), created by US artist Robert Morris in 1977 near the city of Lelystad (The Netherlands).
The land art piece consists of two large concentric earth walls, the outer one having a 91m diameter, in which V-span openings cast a view on the endless polder landscape. At the beginning of spring and autumn one can see the sun rise through the middle steel visor.
In open view but located far outside the city, the work offers an escape while still being part of it all.
The work Exposure by Antony Gormley is the latest addition to the collection of landart in Flevoland, the 26 meter high statue being placed in 2010.
more on the artworks
