Deep Storage

On April 7th, 2024, Thinking Forest organized its first event on Landgoed Welna. Lian Kasper and Simon van der Els guided us through the forest on a Deep Time Walk, which took us on a journey of 4.6 billion years through the history of the Earth. The walk concluded upon arriving at Gerbrand Burger’s new sculpture On A Trajectory Through A Maze of Trajectories.

Deep Storage marked the first event of Thinking Forest at Landgoed Welna, during which the wooden sculpture On A Trajectory Through A Maze Of Trajectories by Gerbrand Burger was first presented to the public.

A Deep Time Walk led by Lian Kasper and Simon van der Els took us along the sunny and still muddy paths of Welna to the edge of the heather field, where it concluded by measuring the last 2 million years of the history of planet earth with a 1 meter stick. The last bit, as thin as the edge of a piece of paper, represents the colonial time and an even thinner 0,01 mm the time since the industrial revolution.

The Deep Time Walk that Lian and Simon organize is part of a broader training that they provide in nature reconnection and coping with ecological grief.

After this contemplative experience, we arrived at Gerbrand Burger’s new work, placed among the trees. Here, we gathered for a plant-based picnic, served by Giel Dons from D.O.N.S. Catering, while Gerbrand provided an introduction to his work.

The material process of the work is important; the pine wood that makes up the sculptural work was grown at the same estate and will stay there to decompose and become part of the forest floor again. The whole construction is entirely made of wood; the larger panels are stitched together with bowtie joints on both sides and dowels. No glue, nails or screws are used.

The title refers to a text by anthropologist Tim Ingold, who writes how objects and materials as separate, finished entities don’t really exist; all materials are continually becoming, sometimes in correspondence with human makers, on their trajectories through a maze of trajectories.

Thank you to all of our contributors, as well as Sub3 Art Fund, Stichting Stokroos en Landgoed Welna for making this program possible.