(Re)configuring Territories 2021
Troll perception in the Heartland
The research programme I participated in for 2021 is part of MYCKET’s new three-year artistic research project called Trollperception in the Heartlands. In Trollperception in the Heartlands, we turned to folktales and legends to reconnect to that time when people in our regions lived closer to and were more subordinated to nature. Trollperception in the Heartlands is a transdisciplinary design project expanding the formal field used to generate sustainable future scenarios through site-specific crafting and crafting video animations informed by folktales and mythology. During the programme we delved into trolls, spirits, and animism together, forming a pack, and crafted together, while simultaneously meditating and sharing these artworks through filmed animations – investigating what new and unforeseen knowledge could be derived from the process itself. The aim was to explore troll perception through artistic research and to create and share viable ways of designing and living for the future. Returning people to dialogue with Earth and its fellow creatures.
Charm 1: The Heartland
A heartland is a site which casts a certain spell on you, a place close to your heart, which triggers your imagination, where you are local.
For the purpose of the workshop a site nearby was chosen. It was important to be able to go there in person. The first charm is a description of the heartland and stories tied to it.
Aerial view of Volkspark Friedrichshain - A.Savin, WikiCommons
Filling in the destroyed bunkers (August 1949) - Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-M1203-316 / Donath, Otto / CC-BY-SA 3.0
The Volkspark Friedrichshain
My heartland is the Volkspark. It is my oasis of green in the desert of concrete and gravel. Lines of cars traversing its veins of tar. Trams and trains rattling from one way station to the next. But within this cacophony, there is peace and solace to be found.
Volksparkfriedrichshain is Berlin’s oldest park. I see it as Berlin’s monument to Myth. Constructed in 1846 — as curious as it may seem to construct something natural — on the grounds of an old vineyard its very conception can be seen to be synecdochal of the industrial revolution that defined the latter half of the 19th century. In the following decades, the park has undergone numerous changes and adaptations.
In 1893 the Märchenbrunnen was constructed. A fountain of fairytales with sculptures representing many of Germany’s most popular fairytales and folk stories. A recognition of the importance of the old ways of knowing but more importantly in my reading of the space the importance of magic, whimsy and the power of imagination.
The two big hills in the park are not natural phenomena but formed from the rubble of two flak towers that were constructed in the park in the second world war. scars decorated and made beautiful by greenery. Gentle carriers of a violent history.
Dotted around the park are other monuments: a peace bell donated by Japan in 1989, various monuments to Friedrick the Great, the March Revolution of 1848, the 1918 Red Sailors' Revolution, the Memorial to Polish Soldiers and German Anti-Fascists, and the Spanish Civil War.
The park stands as a beacon of history softly spoken for those willing to pay attention.
but these days it is mostly used as a social meeting point, a place to exercise or soak in Berlins summer sun and barbecue in the summer, or go tobogganing in the winter.
But I like to venture away from the crowds and deep into the greenery and commune so to speak with the park non-human inhabitants. Take part in its fecundity in the spring, collecting various herbs, flowers and fruit. Observe its insect inhabitants, chatter along with the squirrels, catch fleeting glimpses of foxes and hedgehogs as they flit through the undergrowth hoping to avoid notice.
Charm 2: Blind Date
Meet the Excessive Multiplicity of the Other; Meet Yourself – a Creature of the Deep Woods
Welcome. Come in from the chaos outside. Brother City is loud and fast and dangerous, but here we are calm and slow come be one with us.
Are you one or are you many?
Tell us what do you bring with you? Do you bring roots to anchor us, Leaves to give us voice? Flowers to waft sweet scents along the wind? Branches to bring us shade? Perhaps you are one of those that crawl and scurry through us?
No. I know this pointed, shifting pressure traversing our lowest most stable contours. I am wary of you. because you bring suffering and trauma your multitude of feet trample our grass sometimes down to the very dirt itself. Yet you also bring succour. You tend to our sickening branches, maintain the fountains you gifted to us. But perhaps my favourite of all you bring sounds of delight. You bring music and laughter. The trills of happiness as your young run through me
Come closer, I have a gift for you, breath deep and if you wish take this you and add sweet joy to your daily sustenance
But as you come closer be careful. Old nettle may look soft and gentle but their touch is like fire.
But tell me, how is it that you can be pointed sharp and rapid, but also broad and still?
So alike so so very unique, your shifting and moving volumes all carry something unlike the other.
You are but one of many hundred today. Are they all your family? Oh not the ones with us today? No, you are alone?
No matter for we are a place for gathering and a place for finding solitude.
No you are not alone for now you are us and we are you and we are together.
Charm 2 redux: sitting the arms of a stump
Come sit be still with me.
My arms no longer hold up the heavens.
My leaves long ago returned to the earth to feed it,
I can no longer offer you shelter from the sun.
But come sit be still with me.
I may have lost my stature,
but still,
I bring structure;
A framework for lives unnoticed.
Come sit be still with me.
Watch as spider spins her web
And wood louse weaves in and out my ribs
Do not rear back in revulsion,
peer closer
and marvel
at a world just beyond
“Park Volk” [hanpainted photographic emulsion on mulberry paper] is a charm inviting you to engage with the overlooked and perhaps reviled inhabitants of my “heartland”.
Charm 3: Amulet
The moment has come to create an amulet
Something that you can carry with you, that somehow resonates with your heartland or something that makes your body vibrant, reminding you of, or calling forth your inner changeling, your troll perception.
Amulets are both able to contain meaning and provoke action or rituals.
A Tribute to Spring’s Bounty
