Which way forward?

2025

Clay, staw, reed, wood

+/- 2,5 x 2 x 3 m.

‘Which way forward?’ is an installation made for LandLab Flevoland. For one week 8 artists worked in and around Robert Morris’ Observatory, creating works with local clay/soil. 

When the Observatory was build in the Dutch province of Flevoland in 1977, there was nothing but (new) land and sky. No highway, no train connection, no wind farm. These networks came later, and disrupted the emptiness that once was. For Which way forward inspiration was found in this development. Walls, formed by a grid of hightway junctions, form a space. This grid is filled with tiles made of local clay. The combination of clay and construction brings associations with (German) half timbering, a sheltered space to say. The visiter is invited to take a set, to ground, to reconnect with the earth beneath, and the empty sky above. The clay tiles themselves deform, by sun, rain, might crumble over time, and fall out of the framework. What remains is the networks of junctions, which encloses the visitors like a cage. The work plays with transitions from security to captivity, from connecting to the here-and-now to the tendency of always being on the way to what’s next.