Living in a world of thoughts, impulses, and constant stimuli, I wonder if the real tangible world still speaks to me. To what extent do I find solid ground in the environment where I literally stand or do my roots lie in an intangible world of thoughts?
In the work In Ogenschouw – een bedriegelijke belofte tot gronden, I searched for answers to what the proverbial word grounding means in this current time. Formulated at the Atelier Oerol and Over het IJ Festival 2019, this brought two playing locations with two different presentation versions.
The audience was questioned how filters and partitions prevent us from becoming one with the tangible and nearby environment.
Is it easier to ground in an environment that we have completely arranged and designed to our own liking, or is nature the landscape where we ground ourselves the best by definition? Do the layers that disturb and cause noise lie within ourselves or outside of ourselves in our surrounding environment? What would a state in which these mental blockades do not exist give us?
The work resulted in an experience where the audience dug themselves up to knee height in the ground of the Terschellinger forest. Face to face with a tree, they were brought to a standstill for ten minutes. The soil in Amsterdam Noord (2.0) did not offer this option. Grounding proved to require a different ability here: through visualization, the visitor was helped to look through bricks and stones, close their ears, and experience grounding in the silence of the inner world.
2018 – 2019
Concept and creation Marinke Eijgenraam
In close collaboration- and performed by Ivar Schutte en Luuk Weers
Artistic Support Maurice Boogaert
Creatief producer Antsje van der Zee
Photography Nichon Glerum, Moon Saris
Special thanks to Igor Vrebac en Warre Simons
In Ogenschouw has been produced by the Atelier Program of the Oerol Festival and the Over het IJ Festival 2018/2019 in coproduction with Schweigman&.
