Het Groen Onder Onze Voeten
Rebel Garden, Brugge Triennial, Musee Brugge, Belgium
with:
Leander De Rycke
Cederic Baeckelandt
Robin Bruyninckx
Janca Van de Velde
Nica Van den Abeele
Benjamin Hilmer
Zion Defraeye
Thomas De Neef
Working together with Vaughn over several months, Howest University architecture students researched the site and explored the area with prompts. Together we generated ideas for a Village Green installation that would manifest aspects of the local plant worlds within the museum space. The two plant communities that the students identified are the wild and tiny worlds of plants underfoot within the urban area, and the cultivated apothecary garden.
In the midst of a city, where it feels that humans dominate the spaces, still plants are ever present. Perhaps we see an outpost of moss on the street, grasses in the verge, trees volunteering their way skyward. Meanwhile, some plants are co-existing with humans through pathways of mutual care. This is the case in the plants growing within the apothecary’s garden where medicinal plants have been cultivated for centuries next to Museum Sint-Janshospitaal. Within the installation, these plants grow with symbiotic care with humans. Bringing the plants to eye level, we meet them up close and breath the same air.
We also collaborated on the architectural forms and installation format of the works. Noticing the traditional forms of local architecture, we also observed and reflected on the unique site of the art installation: the Sint-Janshospitaal. Not only does this ancient building have the trunks of huge oaks supporting its ceiling, its history is also one of a place of care and succor where nuns tended the sick and grew plants for their healing properties.
While the artwork arose out of this context, it also had to be installed in a historic museum space, a UNESCO world heritage site, where the physical space as well as conservation needs created strict parameters for the methods of creating and installing the work. Through the process of collaboration, showing persistence and cultivating humor, we created this work together. Thank you Howest students and museum staff and curators!
As a side project, we also created Postcards from Plants that found their way into the museum gift shops.
2024
with:
Leander De Rycke
Cederic Baeckelandt
Robin Bruyninckx
Janca Van de Velde
Nica Van den Abeele
Benjamin Hilmer
Zion Defraeye
Thomas De Neef
Working together with Vaughn over several months, Howest University architecture students researched the site and explored the area with prompts. Together we generated ideas for a Village Green installation that would manifest aspects of the local plant worlds within the museum space. The two plant communities that the students identified are the wild and tiny worlds of plants underfoot within the urban area, and the cultivated apothecary garden.
In the midst of a city, where it feels that humans dominate the spaces, still plants are ever present. Perhaps we see an outpost of moss on the street, grasses in the verge, trees volunteering their way skyward. Meanwhile, some plants are co-existing with humans through pathways of mutual care. This is the case in the plants growing within the apothecary’s garden where medicinal plants have been cultivated for centuries next to Museum Sint-Janshospitaal. Within the installation, these plants grow with symbiotic care with humans. Bringing the plants to eye level, we meet them up close and breath the same air.
We also collaborated on the architectural forms and installation format of the works. Noticing the traditional forms of local architecture, we also observed and reflected on the unique site of the art installation: the Sint-Janshospitaal. Not only does this ancient building have the trunks of huge oaks supporting its ceiling, its history is also one of a place of care and succor where nuns tended the sick and grew plants for their healing properties.
While the artwork arose out of this context, it also had to be installed in a historic museum space, a UNESCO world heritage site, where the physical space as well as conservation needs created strict parameters for the methods of creating and installing the work. Through the process of collaboration, showing persistence and cultivating humor, we created this work together. Thank you Howest students and museum staff and curators!
As a side project, we also created Postcards from Plants that found their way into the museum gift shops.
2024
