SAGA CENTRE
Jasper Griepink
(Netherlands)
2020 – Audio & video installation
Duration approx. 35 minutes
Origin stories and myths shape how we look at the world, nature, and the other. In the vision of countless indigenous cosmologies, stories in effect create reality. We come from story, so to speak. The way we see the world is also determined by the stories that are told to us. Unfortunately, as time progresses, stories are obscured and altered by story-braiders not interested in bringing us closer to each other and to the natural world. A great unweaving happened. In order to proceed with healing and restoration of this connection, we need “re-story-ation,” as Gary Nabhan* writes. In other words, until we hear its stories again, our relationship with the land cannot heal.
Artist Jasper Griepink invites you to lay down in the installation SAGA CENTRE, to tune into a mythical audio-story. Performing as hybrid orator musician nature priest, Jasper tells the tale of D E E P S O I L, a subterranean layer of earth, mineral and nutrients that is said to have a consciousness of its own. As you listen to the story of the ancient Kinfolx of AARD and the imperial bloodline of KILN, your imagination is assuredly woven into the narrative. Because you, the listener, are always part of the story too. Embedded within a landscape of lore, you are invited to mount the soft bedrock that makes up the installation, and get carried away.
*Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2013.
