About trees and street art
Heaven cannot be reached anymore
The stairway to heaven has been demolished on orders of city council. The surrounding trees have been cut off and their trunks and roots have been excavated and destroyed.
Nothing remembers anymore to their once existence.
All the trees in the museum street were also cut off. But this resulted in an artistic action:
Translation:
In the museum street in Dordrecht (The Netherlands) have, due to a planned new pavement, all the trees been cut off on a average height of 120 cm. later on, during the repaving, shall the remaining stumps and roots be excavated.
Saskia Meesters and Frans van Lent, artists and residents of this neighbourhood took the initiative to, without permission nor financial support, use the amputee tree trunks as pedestals for temporary works of art, statements, and visual pronunciations.
There are 14 tree trunks and they found as much artists to collaborate in this project.
All the works will be removed before the expected start of the repaving on the 22th of April.
No. 14 Frans van Lent
No. 13 Ton van Dalen
No. 12 Fransje Diekman
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No. 11 Manuela Porceddu
No. 10 Saskia Meesters Translation of the text on the red board: “Contributor to the statistics”
No. 9 Kitty van der Veer
No.8 Diana van Hal
No. 7 Theun okkerse
Translation: If, here, then, this.
Translation: Then, there, this.
Translation: Than, now.
Translation: If, here.
No. 6 Ton Kraayeveld Translation:Now.
No. 5 Tobb & Dubio Note of the author: the blog of Jegens en Tevens mentions a text written in Braille using paracetamol tablets. When I saw all this art, the rains already took their toll, leaving only a couple of messy white spots.
No. 4 Ivo Kraaijeveld
No. 3 Maureen Bachaus & Maarten van den Berg
Translation of the text on the top of the tree stump:“Hear how the oxygen stick, chopped off, gasps for air.”
Translation of the white board:
Do you wish to be part of this art work?
Follow up the instructions underneath:
>Performance<
1. Read the poetry line on the top of the tree trunk.
2. stand or sit on the tree trunk.
3. Ask someone to capture this on video.
4. Breath in heavily, gasp, long for air and persevere to this.
5. Send the video to bachaus@outlook.com
This green performance art work is an initiative of the visual artist Maureen Bachaus and poet Maarten van den Berg.
No.2 Rowan van der Sterren. Note of the author: a week after this art work was revealed, someone broke away the piece of chalk to write:”Don’t think white, Don’t think black, But think with the colour of your heart.” Which is, as a matters of facts, quiet a famous pop song text of Frank Boeijen.
No. 1 Margreet Huisman
Writing this blog I was reminded to what an old Palastinian man told Banksy when he was spraying stencils on the Israelian wall:”Your making this wall beautiful. We don’t want this wall to be beautiful. We hate this wall, go home.” (Link)
That is of course another way of looking at things.
But then again, by making art on these trunks, the decapitated trees have become much more visible. While if nothing happened, these trees were forgotten very easily.
When I was taking these photographs a young couple rounded the corner, entering the museum street. They didn’t spare the art on the stumps a second glance. But instead crossed the street, straight on their way to the art museum. They were clearly art lovers.
Advised listening Marmozets; Move ,Shake, Hide
Cheers, CatweazleMagic
Little note for visitors who are not aquainted with the dutch language: If you are interested in my art, please click on the union jack in the upper left corner, or follow thins link.