Flood is coming, 2022
Installation, text, filmed material
I’m invited to work with the Immaterial Lake Gallery (DK) and their engagement in an area that has been drained from water.
"In far northern Denmark there is a lake without water, and it is called the Gårdbo Lake. It was emptied by man, ages ago, because man needed land where to grow seeds. And as the lake was emptied, all the fish that used to stay there disappeared and many birds and insects as well. But the farmers were happily growing their seeds and they ate and they celebrated.
As time went by, some people started to miss the fish, animals and plants that used to live in Gårdbo Lake. And some people said they would like to row a boat over the lake, just now and then. And these people wanted to stop the pumps that drained the lake from water.
But other people said that even if the pumps would stop, fish would not come back, and no other animals or insects either, the lake was dead and that’s how things go. Some said that the water in the lake used to flood the land around every spring, causing troubles in the neighbourhood, and maybe someone drowned in the lake when it was once filled with sparkling water? They said a lake could also be dangerous and bad!
Whatever people said, it didn’t matter. Because the man who owns Gårdbo lake, who is richer than rich, so I’ve been told, did not want to stop the pumps. And he wanted a price higher than high for his land, so no-one living could buy it from him and make a lake. This is what I have heard.
Johannes and Inga moved from the big southern cities up to north of Denmark, and they saw the lake that had been immaterialized. And they immediately wanted to materialise it, so they started an on-line gallery on the small road leading through the area. And they asked artists to come and make art there, to acknowledge the lake and its immaterialization. In this way they imagined the lake could be refilled, one way or another.
I was not sure I had skills for making lakes but got interested in their longing for a project so big, a new manmade lake in an old manmade field, I got interested in their wishes.
I asked if they knew any animals that could actually benefit from a new lake in Northern Denmark, and they asked their friend, the mighty Ornitologist, and he gave us the name of a certain bird and it was the Almendelig Ryle.
And I could imagine this bird to materialise, and it was even made of gold (or golden confetti that I had collected when working backstage)
And I had heard of ice melting elsewhere causing floods, and I could imagine ice being brought to fill the canals of Gårdbo lake with water.
And then we imagined a raft to keep some things staying on the surface, and this raft was made of sticks and styrofoam that was light. And with us on the raft we brought plants and we brought mud and soil where we could imagine new plants to grow. And we brought people and insects and we brought empty seashells and empty oyster shells where we could imagine new oysters to grow because if we could not imagine this who would we be?
And in the deep forests upon the raft, bonfires kept us warm at night and we watched the stars, and we waited for the flood and there was desire"
Link to
>>> Miraculous laws llll, 2019
>>> Layers, Great wishingwell, 2018