Artists: Agnieszka Kurant, Andrea Carlson & Rozalinda Borcila & Heidi Erdrich (Ojibwe), Bert Villa, Emi Kodama, Helmut Smits, Jessica Warboys, Kåre Frang, Leon De Bruijne, Lois Weinberger, Manoela Medeiros, Mathew Kneebone, Maximilian Schubert, Nicolas Deshayes, Nina Canell, Olga D’haene, Olivier Goethals, Sharon Van Overmeiren, Paul Barsch & Tilman Hornig, Tom Van Hee, Tom Volkaert & Zoro Feigl
Exhibition title: Reservoir
Venue: 019, Ghent, Belgium
Date: September 4, 2020 – February 27, 2021
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and 019, Ghent
From September 2020 onwards 019 sheds its roof. Relentless rain [1] floods the building. What was once an exhibition space, becomes a knee-high morass; the floor submerged and overgrown. The former welding factory, turned artist-run space will now double as a public wetland and water treatment plant.
Hydrophytes, rain, artworks, visitors and installations become submerged in the damp atmosphere and form moist alliances.
019 grows into an ecosystem, in which the different organisms and the environment are one functioning structure in a constant flux.
019 becomes a plant.
The swamp works – to welcome visitors, to educate on botany, to purify water from the canal. It collects aquatic rituals and creates new ones.
As a humid public park, it is a place that functions both as an unlikely [2] intervention in the urbanized, hardened surroundings, and, at the same time, as an extension of the canal next to it. Its borders are fluid. It blurs what is in- and outside. What’s artificial and natural, exotic and native, become superfluous distinctions.
In the end, it pours down on everything and everyone.
A guide leads visitors along black alders, installations, fountains, gargoyles, pumps, sculptures, sedge, videoworks, sweet rush…
An umbrella is strongly recommended. Rent or buy one at the entrance to keep yourself dry and support the project.
Fishing is only allowed with a permit.
[1] A complex system negotiating between meteorology and mechanics, clouds, pumps and vaporizers will drive a constant downpour.
[2] Although the creation of a park in an urbanized surrounding is a proven method to increase the real estate prices in an area.
