In collaboration with Nadia de Vries.
Exhibited at 4bid gallery Amsterdam, 2021.
A version of would Flowers put fake Humans on their Graves? dead flower power funeral wreath is exhibited at group exhibition Prepper Paradise at Bureau Europa, 2022.
Words by curator Ward Janssen:
This funeral bouquet comprises flowers from Volgermeer, a natural recreation area north of Amsterdam founded in 2011. However, a rotten history lies less than a metre beneath Volgemeer’s surface. It contains an immense dumping ground for toxic waste covered with a thin protective layer. Nowadays, nature has to serve as a recreational meeting place for the expanding city, but in the 1920s, this old peat bog became Amsterdam’s main waste dump. Situated in the capital’s backyard, it was a no man’s land for the city’s industrial and chemical waste. Today, this seems unimaginable given the area’s thriving nature.
Photo by Moniek Wegdam.
The threat of climate change is forcing humanity to re-evaluate its relationship to nature. The Anthropocene, the proposed name for the current geological era, is so-called because of humankind’s permanent mark on the planet. Rather than putting itself at the centre of nature, at the helm of spaceship Earth, humanity must acknowledge its role as the Anthropocene’s causal agent. Therefore, two responses are appropriate: humankind and nature must once again be symbiotic, and nature’s current demise should and must be mourned.
Death dancing again, rather confused:
Let Death Dance Again investigates poetic and anthropological rituals, old and new, to re-evaluate the grieving process accompanying the climate crisis and death as a natural part of life. Remembrance of lost climate makes the enormity of climate change less abstract, better understood and, above all, felt.
Prologue at 4bid gallery exhibition:
“How did I turn into a mountain? A funeral march for a glacier here, a memorial plaque for another one there, rivers and lakes suffocating to me, death? Apparently, I have to adjust my moves to the heartbeat of a dying mountain.”
Would Flowers put fake Humans on their Graves? investigates the power of death and commemorative culture related to environmental devastation, in a poetic manner. To many, the impact of anthropogenic climate change still remains abstract and far away in both space and time. Though it occurs right here and right now. Perceptible by all senses rather than abstract. This led to the idea writing poems while visiting and observing locations nearby, in and around Amsterdam, sensing the impact of the climate crisis on various levels:
—
A public park
near the city centre.
Daily life
and leftovers,
dry grass,
circles,
daisies at a funeral: “I am the God of hellfire, and I bring you:
BBQ and Cremation.”
—
A death sharing space
with partly expiring graves,
anonymously.
—
A toxic waste dump
covered by a shroud
made of thin foil,
buried underneath a nature reserve
in Amsterdam’s forgotten backyard.
—
A car graveyard
filled with metallic bodies
stacked up
claiming their own space.
—
A hidden oasis in the outskirts
where MadMax meets Mother Earth as human made fire
in a yurt.
—
With each location the radius expanded – and so did the mourning circle.
The selection derives from raw material written on the premises in collaboration with writer, poet and researcher Dr. Nadia de Vries. After reflecting on the material connections between the text elements, snippets, topics and types of text had been made. The choice of each material and medium is based on observations at the various locations and adds to the poetic value of the works.
