I have made a couple of installations for the summer arts festival in Damme, near Bruges. They are not typical of my work, but probably still typical of my approach. Here are a couple of shots of one installation, a skeleton house I built with the help of my friend and rowing partner, Koen DeVaere. The garden is part of a monastic site in continuous use for 800 years (Blog 2 July), now abandoned for modern buildings nearby. I felt the need to comment on the end of this long tradition. And I felt the very practical need to use the beams and plaster coming from my studio, which is being renovated. Always good to kill two birds with one lump of plaster. My “Black Library” also went into the pile. It is poignant to see the books swell and burst their spines in the rain. Standing in front of the installation when it was finished, with the smell of plaster dust and the fluttering of book pages, I can imagine the feeling in Dresden after the bombing; or in Timbuktu after the libraries were ravaged.
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