At the crossroads

 

Photos and text by Francesca Romana Rietti

 

At the crossroads

 

Ringkøbing, Tuesday 13^th of August 2024

 

Just at the entrance of Natur Kraft, one of the five different open-air spaces where the research project “Art-Nature Lab Workshops and Lectures” will take place, today I enjoyed the luxury to be in one of these strips of land where borders do not exist. There I met a group made by the three artists (Klavs Weiss, Karen Havskov Jensen and Johanne Randen) of the Contemporary Visual Art Projects Association in West Jutland  (ET4U) and Dragana Kojicic, a Serbian architect specialized in sustainable buildings made with natural materials. They gathered together for the first time to create a wooden construction.

What I saw and impressed me was a fairytale house with no walls and without a roof. Above us only the low sky of Jutland made by huge white clouds and wind. The panels that support the structure are made by square windows that they started to fill up with different kind of materials, found and collected in the surrounding areas. Layers of clay, bouquets of heather, straw, skeins of wool, bamboo, small pieces of logs, bricks made with earth, dung and water and little mudballs, realized with the Japanese Dorodango technique.

While I was talking with the artists and the architect, I asked them if they could imagine a title for their creation. The answer was: “Without title”. I replayed: “Could you choose three words?” “Yes, deconstruction, wind, slump”.

The installation will be completed by the participants of the workshop on the 15^th August, but today I experienced a prelude. The daily life of people who use to cross this area - jogging, walking with their dogs, tourists visiting the Natur Kraft with children - interact already with the installation

As a barter for the conversation we had, I was helping them. Meanwhile, a German kid on holiday with his parents joined us. He wanted to help. He started to deconstruct one of the square windows filled up with clay using the trowel.

Crossroads of crafts, artists, countries, languages, generations, materials, nature’s elements.

No walls, no borders.

Just a path in search of a dialogue.

“Imagine… Above us only sky”.