Immovable
Property
PERFORMANCE AND INSTALLATION,
Mixed media, Leeuwarden, 2017.
VHDG-SRV residency program
Solo exhibition
With the support of Mondriaan Fonds
I intervened in the Frisian territory by transporting land from one place to another, while living and traveling in an old SRV bus that I transformed into an agricultural device.
Installation exhibited at
HANIA / Kunstruimte H47
Stichting VHDG (solo show)
21.10.17 - 18.11.17
I made a performance in which I moved a piece of ground from one place to another.
First, tools were made so I could excavate the site and transport that which I took.
Photo taken by Gijs van Hesteren for Harlinger Courant
In collaboration with ‘Echte smederij’ Theo Jilderts
In collaboration with ‘De grote beun pagina’
To find suitable locations I had to convince people to entrust me with a piece of what they owned. Each time I would bring a piece of the previous owner and in turn take a similar piece away.
Of each exchange a contract was made, drafted by me and owner in collaboration.
Of each exchange a contract was made, drafted by me and owner in collaboration. For the making of the contract a model was used. It was an old contract found in an archive that described the selling of a small piece of land that would be transported somewhere else. It was written in Dutch, the language of the Law even in Friesland, where most people speak Frisian in their homes.
As I do not fully understand the language (one or the other), I asked the people to dictate the document to me, changing dates and places and some other information to make it suitable to the here and now. I would notate it as well as I could, but inevitably many spelling mistakes appeared in the transcription. Because of the old fashioned handwriting the document was very difficult to read, and even harder to dictate. I encouraged the readers to fill in the gaps by inventing that which they did not understand. This freedom to invent collided with a will to understand in many cases (something that, as an immigrant, I experience on a daily basis). This simple activity induced a sense of misappropriation of what is supposed to be their language and the documents that prove their bind to the land. The audio of the people dictating the contract was available for the audience to listen to in the installation. In it the effort was evident, mixed with feelings oscillating between frustration and fun.
The contract describes, in a relay race style, how a piece of land is taken into my custody and exchanged between owners, while I performed the role of the notary, constituting by that simple act what is known in the jus commune as private law.
The audio of the people dictating the
contract was available for the audience to listen to in the installation. In it the effort was evident, mixed with feelings oscillating between frustration and fun.
Inside the bus there were photos, tools and videos that showed glimpses of my encounters with people on the road, and with whom I sometimes collaborated in the making of the tools necessary for the performance.