Where the Wild Things Are
UNFORTUNATELY THE WORKSHOP WILL NOT TAKE PLACE
In a workshop supervised by artist Frank Bruggeman, participants must create a small wilderness installation. Can they imitate something of the unpredictability and tension of nature, using what they've found on a walk in the woods (or in the garden or even at the supermarket), and then bring it home?
13 November 2021 13:00 - 15:30
People like to get close to nature. For the _Temporary House of Home _exhibition, Frank Bruggeman made an installation in which the vegetable wilderness has invaded a Dutch house, turning it into a terrarium on a human scale.
Such a recreation of the wilderness is also possible on a smaller scale. In a workshop, individual wilderness installations and then a collective version will be made, using materials formed by nature (or that have been deformed by natural forces. The artist is bringing a selection of plant materials and objects that can be used. Participants are also asked to bring something: natural finds made during a walk in the woods or on the beach, something special (or very ordinary) from their own garden, or even their local supermarket's fruit and veg section.
Afterwards, they can take a vegetable fragment of the joint installation home with them.
Home of Multispecies
We are increasingly aware that our home offers a home for multiple species of insect, microbes and even artificial intelligence, yet our view of ourselves as the main occupant is unchanged. In and around our homes we have to deal with all kinds of inmates and neighbours, not all of whom we have personally invited. What does that do to our notions of inside and outside, and the degree of control we have over life in our homes?
"The human tendency to tame the wilderness is ineradicable and sometimes takes perverse forms."
Het Nieuwe Instituut asked 13 artists and designers to each furnish a room to illustrate the fact that the house has gradually become much more than a personal safe haven. Frank Bruggeman fitted the room assigned to him with sliding doors, the safe window onto nature - the garden - in the average single-family home. At the same time, however, he brought in the wilderness in the form of all kinds of erratic plant growth. The result transforms the room into a terrarium, where caged humans can marvel at YouTube videos about a crocodile, a fox, a puma and an owl that have also been made pets.
Frank Bruggeman
Frank Bruggeman is an installation artist and designer. He is particularly interested in the friction between nature and culture, or more specifically in the question of how much wilderness is allowed in an increasingly urbanised society. His work includes what he calls 'nature objects', interventions in public space such as temporary gardens, and exhibition designs in which the landscape is central.