The Animate Landscape
Phytomorphic Phantasies
Ingenlunde Hellig
Sorry for Calling you an Inanimate Object
The Significant Other
Det Bevidste Landskab
Morphologies
Window of Otherworldly Delights
CV
Info
Installation, video, plastic vegetation planted in concrete, grow lights on stands and windy fans.
2020.
Duration 13.30 min.
Exhibition context: Solo exhibition at Sol, Nexø, Denmark.
The Sentient Landscape shows a landscape consisting of overgrown vegetation made of plastic. As the film progresses, hot air is added to the plastic flora, which brings life to the landscape and animates the plastic plants so that they act like living organisms, after which the same heat causes the plastic plants to melt, and slowly dissolve the entire landscape, until finally there is only a seething and boiling primordial soup left.
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“Creation is composed of the descending movement of gravity, the ascending movement of grace and the descending movement of the second degree of grace” - Excerpt from Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil
A soft wind blows through the landscape while alternating images of flowers, grass and heather appear. What seems like a field of poppies under a blue sky is seen in the background; next we are in a desert with cactus flowers and purple rock formations in the horizon. We hear sounds from the bushes, sounds of movement, of life. Or?
During the film projected on the wall in Sol, the small movements start to look more and more strained. The shape of the flowers changes while the crackling sounds intensify. Slowly we start to combine the sound and pictures and an unusual scenario emerge in front of us: a landscape in the process of a meltdown.
The word Landscape originally arose as a technical term among the flemish painters. In painting, an impression or illusion of a landscape can develop in the mind of the subject observing it. It is not essential whether the motif refers to a fictitious landscape or a piece of land existing in the physical world. Only for a short moment the relation to reality is central – then perception takes over.
The philosopher Georg Simmel wrote in his text The Philosophy of Landscape that contrary to the notion of ‘a piece of land’ the understanding of ‘landscape’ is dependent on it’s own limitation. Because where nature is a boundless totality of a whole (and indivisible), the landscape has moved out from nature and in to a being for it self which only becomes visible under certain conditions.
In arts’ many representations of landscape we are often reminded of the aspect ratio between ourselves, humans, and the wild, sublime nature. But in this exhibition by Kim Laybourn, the landscape is created by the artist himself – in collaboration with modern industrial production facilities – and there is no-one to mediate the experience for us. We are ourselves placed in the middle of the landscape, and during it’s gradual meltdown we become more and more conscious of the powers that effect the landscape, change it and finally destroy it. Destructive powers that – as we learn during the film – are applied by the artist, the human, ourself.
Text by Sofie Amalie Andersen, June 2020
Publication made in collaboration with Andreas Vermehren Holmn, Writer, editor and publisher at Forlaget Virkelig. With contributions by Anders Dunker & Bruno Latour, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kim Laybourn, Sofie Amalie Andersen and Andreas Vermehren Holm
Download the publication here
Curated by Sofie Amalie Andersen.
Photo: Sofie Amalie Andersen
Produced with support by
Danish Arts Foundation
Arts and Culture Norway
Nordic Culture Point
Kunst- og Kulturhistorisk Råd (Bornholms Regionskommune)