Handwork, kærlig hånd, manos a la obra
Ringkøbing, Thursday 15th of August 2024
We spent our second day participating to the Bionstallation workshop led by the artists of ET4F (Klavs Weiss, Karen Havskov Jensen and Johanne Randen, Denmark and Norway) and by the Serbian architect Dragana Kojicic. When we arrived at Natur Kraft, they welcomed us around their creation. They were waiting for us to complete it. Theirs was not a common choice: unknown and mostly inexperienced hands were intrusted with the task of finishing their work of art. The one they had been working on, incessantly, for several weeks, heedless of the rain and wind. Yet their smiles today were as shining as the sun of this Danish summer’s day.
Under a big green tent, they had prepared a long
working table with dishes, bowls, jars, bottles, shingles. In each of them
there were examples of the different natural materials we would have then used
working on their installation. They gave us the possibility to have a sensorial
experience: we touched, we smelled, we combined, and we shaped all the
different natural materials. While listening their enthusiastic explanation about
the origins, the properties, the composition and the uses of each of them, we
made a cultural journey in time and space. We learnt about history, chemistry,
art, biodiversity, architecture, science, agriculture. They let us be aware of
the fact that Nature concerns everything: politics, art, personal behavior,
social life. The workshop has been an empiric process of awakening for the body,
the mind and the consciousness: doing while learning and creating while playing.
It is difficult to put into words what was
happening in the afternoon when all the hands together ‘besieged’, from each
side, the installation. Four hours under the sun building bricks, chopping
wood, chopping small trunks, stirring clay with pigments of color, straw, water, heather… Everyone could fill up a part of the installation, far beyond the
artistic and manual skills of each one. There were expert hands and other
trembling. No matter. The leaders of the workshop, kept always their smile and trust looking at our hands.
A crossroads of languages, techniques and styles has gently occupied a piece of the windy west Jutland coast. The coming seasons will certainly transform its external shape, but will never erode the power of its roots, origins and purposes.
Long life to the sound of the laughs of this day playing with clay.
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