Programme of artist interventions at Land Art sites in Flevoland
For the Land Art Live project, contemporary artists are invited to respond to the famous land art works that have been realised since the ’70s in Flevoland, during the construction of this new polder in The Netherlands. Land Art Live intends to examine how these art works have come to be part of the social structure and oral history of this area, and how they play a role in the everyday life of the people who live around them. By pairing these large-scale, monumental and somewhat “muscular” land art works to artists with an interest in the social, the temporary and the performative, the project also brings together two aspects of public art. Land Art Live started in 2013 and will close with a final exhibition in 2016.
Sunday, September 14, 15h
Zhana Ivanova at Robert Morris’s Observatory (1977)
Upon the invitation of Land Art Live, Zhana Ivanova presents the performance Predictions. The function of a “cosmic compass,” as intended in Morris’s Observatory, serves as a starting point for Ivanova’s work. Her focus, however, diverts from the movements of the sun and the planets—instead she observes the site’s immediate environment. Every day, a steady flow of trains, trucks, tractors, cars and bicycles passes by the Observatorium’s perimeter—forming ever-changing, and as far as we know incidental, constellations. As patterns emerge and establish, Ivanova foresees a scenario in which daily contingency and a perhaps grander scheme seem to intersect. A series of predictions can be heard through individual headphones, and viewers are invited to see which of them will come true and which will not. Zhana Ivanova (b. 1977, Bulgaria) recently was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Her film of this project will be shown at Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam from November 1 to December 20.
Saturday, October 18
Rory Pilgrim at Daniel Libeskind’s Polderland Garden of Love and Fire (1997)
Rory Pilgrim sets out to explore the relations between “love” and “land” in his project Affection is the Best Protection. Intended as a space set on the intersection between several geographical lines, thus connecting world cities as symbols of poetic concepts of love and fire, the area around Daniel Libeskind’s land art work has unintentionally gained a hidden function as a gay cruising ground. Pilgrim aims to develop the site into a safe haven where our experiences of “love” can be discussed and cultivated, in this way creating new geographical lines for the site, connecting people from the gay community in Flevoland with those in Senegal and Russia. A special celebratory performance choreographed in the form of a disco will launch the project in October. From here, Pilgrim’s work will develop into a series of small happenings, workshops and ultimately a film, bringing together a broad circle of collaborators in a final performance in June 2015. Rory Pilgrim (b. 1988, UK) completed a working period at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. His work was recently shown at the Hayward Gallery, the Bonnefanten Museum and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Practical information
The Land Art Live project is curated by Martine van Kampen. It started in 2013 at the former Museum De Paviljoens in Almere and is now hosted at the Schouwburg Almere. The project is generously supported by the Province of Flevoland and the Mondriaan Fund. More information and directions can be found on landartlive.blogspot.com.
Original land art sites: Robert Morris, Observatory, 1977; Piet Slegers, Earth Sea, 1982; Richard Serra, Sea Level, 1996; Marinus Boezem, The Green Cathedral, 1996; Daniel Libeskind, Polderland Garden of Love and Fire, 1997; Antony Gormley, Exposure, 2010.
Previous Land Art Live projects (2013): symposium on the social life of land art (with keynote speaker Aurora Tang of the Los Angeles-based Center for Land Use Interpretation) and artist intervention Matrix Botanica by Melanie Bonajo, at Marinus Boezem’s The Green Cathedral.