Hortus Conclusus 't Janboersmeulentien 2
In this work, I try to hum from memory the Larghetto from Dvořák's Serenade for strings in E major, the fourth movement. The work consists of three different recordings I chose from multiple recordings, which I made over a longer period of time. Between each recording is some time, so the observer can suddenly and unexpectedly come to hear the humming.
For this work, I made a kind of bird house that can be attached to a tree just like an ordinary bird house. As a result, the appearance of the work is not noticeably present. The attention goes to the humming from memory.
A serenade is "a musical tribute, brought in honor in front of someone's house in the evening" (the Van Dale dictionary). This is why it fits the landscape project with social sculpture that with the Hortus Conclusus, gives people, through the social networks of the village and the region, a chance to stay in the historic lane - a place to 'live' there for a moment. Shielded, protected to 'be there' and abide.
The historic lane also has such a function in the memory of the people who came there. Now it's closed and overgrown (with the project I hope to open and restore it again), but in memory we still abide there. It unchangeably has a positive and safe connotation in the memories of myself and others that came there. It's a Hortus Conclusus, a dwelling, in our memory, where we like to stay and abide in a lasting way.
The Dvořák serenade has a romantic, lyrical quality. In the larghetto (a little slow), the light melancholic quality comes to the foreground. In the romantic period of the 18th and 19th centuries, the period from which Dvořák's work originated and at the end of which it was made (1875), our landscape experience was transformed from a more natural to an idealized and reflective experience. In romanticism, nature was viewed more as something pure and clean, as intrinsically good, rather than a reality we needed, that we try to put to our hand, but that was also threatening, dangerous and uncertain. Human emotions were seen as reflected in the landscape, the sublime was found in greatness and wideness, stormy feelings were recognized in thunderclouds, happiness and cheer in green, young animals and flowering plants, the finality was seen in old, weathered trees and buildings taken back by nature. This landscape i experience is still very close to us and is part of our contemporary culture. Nature and landscape are prone to being considered valuable, we call them both 'beautiful' and we prefer to filter our economic use of it from our holiday pictures and living environment.
I believe it now goes without saying how and why the larghetto of the serenade for strings fits the historic lane. In the trying to recall, but never completely "grasp", is the incapability of retaining that what has passed enclosed. Our memory is flawed and that is what makes heritage, such as this historic lane, even more important. By returning to the literal place of the memory, the memory becomes an essential force, becomes stronger and less inaccessible. At the same time, the melancholy comes forward: because it's not what it was, and what it was can never come back again. Because we ourselves are no longer who we were, at least: we are ourselves still, but changed. The place we returned to thus reflects that - a truth we can nevertheless call 'romantic' if we find it in the landscape.
Dvořák's serenade has, at least in my view, a pastoral quality. It's music that evokes, with a certain pleasure, from a safe distance, the landscape - even when you're not actually there. And, as an adolescent, I indeed walked over that lane, 't Janboersmeulaentien, with this serenade of Dvořák on my walkman. The above ideas became in my own life, memory and experience more than ideas at an abstract distance. They have become "true" in one way or another.
For this work, I made a kind of bird house that can be attached to a tree just like an ordinary bird house. As a result, the appearance of the work is not noticeably present. The attention goes to the humming from memory.
A serenade is "a musical tribute, brought in honor in front of someone's house in the evening" (the Van Dale dictionary). This is why it fits the landscape project with social sculpture that with the Hortus Conclusus, gives people, through the social networks of the village and the region, a chance to stay in the historic lane - a place to 'live' there for a moment. Shielded, protected to 'be there' and abide.
The historic lane also has such a function in the memory of the people who came there. Now it's closed and overgrown (with the project I hope to open and restore it again), but in memory we still abide there. It unchangeably has a positive and safe connotation in the memories of myself and others that came there. It's a Hortus Conclusus, a dwelling, in our memory, where we like to stay and abide in a lasting way.
The Dvořák serenade has a romantic, lyrical quality. In the larghetto (a little slow), the light melancholic quality comes to the foreground. In the romantic period of the 18th and 19th centuries, the period from which Dvořák's work originated and at the end of which it was made (1875), our landscape experience was transformed from a more natural to an idealized and reflective experience. In romanticism, nature was viewed more as something pure and clean, as intrinsically good, rather than a reality we needed, that we try to put to our hand, but that was also threatening, dangerous and uncertain. Human emotions were seen as reflected in the landscape, the sublime was found in greatness and wideness, stormy feelings were recognized in thunderclouds, happiness and cheer in green, young animals and flowering plants, the finality was seen in old, weathered trees and buildings taken back by nature. This landscape i experience is still very close to us and is part of our contemporary culture. Nature and landscape are prone to being considered valuable, we call them both 'beautiful' and we prefer to filter our economic use of it from our holiday pictures and living environment.
I believe it now goes without saying how and why the larghetto of the serenade for strings fits the historic lane. In the trying to recall, but never completely "grasp", is the incapability of retaining that what has passed enclosed. Our memory is flawed and that is what makes heritage, such as this historic lane, even more important. By returning to the literal place of the memory, the memory becomes an essential force, becomes stronger and less inaccessible. At the same time, the melancholy comes forward: because it's not what it was, and what it was can never come back again. Because we ourselves are no longer who we were, at least: we are ourselves still, but changed. The place we returned to thus reflects that - a truth we can nevertheless call 'romantic' if we find it in the landscape.
Dvořák's serenade has, at least in my view, a pastoral quality. It's music that evokes, with a certain pleasure, from a safe distance, the landscape - even when you're not actually there. And, as an adolescent, I indeed walked over that lane, 't Janboersmeulaentien, with this serenade of Dvořák on my walkman. The above ideas became in my own life, memory and experience more than ideas at an abstract distance. They have become "true" in one way or another.