Dansendwoud – Oerol - 2005

The landscape installation ‘Dansendwoud’ (dancing forest) is the first project of SLeM at the Oerol festival at Terschelling, 2005. The public helped planting a forest of 7500 ‘zwiepers’ – four-meter high pvc-pipes- in the breakers of the beach, between beach pavilion Midsland aan zee and Formeren aan zee.  Primary schools also came to help.

The zwiepers were placed at the interface of the ever-changing shoreline, no pre-conceived plan but a creation that arised by doing.

The Dansendwoud visualized the natural process of the current and the primal forces of the sea and wind. This translates the theme of Oerol 2005 ‘infinite swell’ to the perspective of the landscape. The movement of the tides and the remaining lines in the sand were a source of inspiration for this project.

This created a whimsical elongated and constantly in the wind moving forest which, from a distance, looked like a reed bed. At low tide the forest is on dry land, high tide it is underwater. The endless movement of the sea is visible and tangible. An unique world. One to get lost in! Wandering through the heaving forest at the interface of sands and endless sea, the imagination is stimulated, perspectives are shifted and borders fade.

A short film is made from the plant activities and in particular from the effects of the wind and shadows. The hands of the public of Oerol also executed the breakdown of the Dansendwoud. In a few hours, all zwiepers were collected and packed up to move to Amsterdam where it was re-established on West Beach in the Westergasfabriek by the help of friends and volunteers. The project in urban context, without the dynamics of wind and water along the coast, was unfortunately unable to get the same strength as in the breakers at Terschelling. This illustrates hat environmental conditions are of importance for the success of such a project.