Elmo Vermijs
AN IMAGINARY WORLD OF WOOD
‘We have broken the great conversation,’ wrote Thomas Berry in his 1991 book Befriending the Earth. ‘We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars.’
How to restore this great conversation with nature?
In my journey I will focus on the voice of the forest and the material wood plays within the societal (green) transition.
https://turnclub.org/traincamp_elmo-vermijs/
MORE INFORMATION:
JOURNEY
In June I will undertake a journey by train, travelling from Amsterdam to the Green Culture Festival in Montenegro, one of the countries with the most percentage of forests in Europe (up to 67% of the land).
Along the way I will question passers-by, travellers and citizens about the relation they have with nature, and more specifically the forest and trees.
This input will be used to design dialogues and make an installation during the Green Culture Festival with the question: How do we restore the great conversation with nature?
And secondly; What is the role of the material wood within that conversation?
WORKSHOP
The workshop is based on the principles of Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga in which he states: “Men is in its essence a playing being, in order to play and develop culture it needs a set of rules”.
Visitors are invited to participate in a series of workshops. By walks in the forest, collecting material, having dialogues and by using the imagination to create a large surface with pieces of wood the workshop will be centered around the question: How to restore the relationship with nature by using imagination?
The result in Montenegro will be an Imaginary world of wood in which the visitor can wonder and associate on scale, city, landscape, sculpture etc. The surface does not define what it is, but how to relate to it.
The results will be used as input for the project Staging Wood that investigates the lifecycles of wood, its different stages and its potential in the societal (green) transition. The project will be shown in the Netherlands at the Kleine Aarde, Boxtel where the same workshop and questions will be discussed.