Scenography CHAPTER 5IVE

In close collaboration with the curator, the design agency Diogo Passarinho Studio developed a scenography that transforms the exhibition space of Het HEM into an agricultural production landscape, where works of art interlock like plots of land. The light – designed by Theatermachine – moves with the time of day and season. During the day the sun plays with the artworks, in the evenings a cool moonlight shines through the space.

Two spatial portals – a sand dune and an irrigation system – divide the essayistic exhibition into three chapters. The first part shows artworks that depict the deep experience of time and the ancestral links with the slow landscape (as with Agnes Waruguru and Agnes Denes); the middle part points us to practices with which we strengthen our connection with nature (such as the training modules of de Onkruidenier or the techniques of beavers that we discover through the drawings of Suzanne Husky); in the last part, technologies of the present and near future determine how we see the landscape and become part of it (think of the works by Gerard Ortín Castellví and Ian Cheng). The visitor moves between two opposing positions – to recall Charles C. Mann's metaphor once again - between the conservative prophet on the one hand and the progressive sorcerer on the other (see also Rieke Vos’ essay in this Zine).