AVANT LA LETTRE ‘Y’ Contribution to ‘Art expedition INTO NATURE’ edition 2016
The reason for this project is the intention of GAE (Groningen Airport Eelde) to set up the area around the runways as a solar field.

By mowing the grass into the contours of the runways, the coincidental location and orientation of the runways will draw the twenty-fifth letter of the alphabet ‘Y’ on the surface of the earth. In an international context, the letter ‘Y’ is pronounced as ‘fan’… WHY’, the -for what- question that precedes all knowledge and progress. The question that has died in every child’s mouth. Now this concise question is asked by the landscape itself.

But above all the ‘Y’ precedes the ‘Z’, the last letter of the alphabet.
Avant la Lettre’ means: ‘before there is talk of’ …of what? …of solar panels at an airport? …of energy landscapes in general? in the Netherlands? Before there is finally a real energy transition?

In a ‘choreography for the mower’ the grass around the grey runways was mowed in paparallel pattern at the end / beginning of June 2016. The low-morning or evening light strikes the earth’s surface and ‘finishes off’ the drawing. Aerophoto Eelde has captured this gigantic drawing on the earth’s surface with the right light fall.
In the tradition of the ‘classic’ Landart, the photographic reflection of this project forms the final product. During INTO NATURE 2016, a photograph measuring 3×4 metres was exhibited in the departure hall of GAE and was combined in a triptych with equally large photographs of two illustrious examples from the Landart Canceled Crop (Finsterwolde 1969) by Dennis Oppenheim and Broken Circle and Spiral Hill by Robert Smithson (Emmen 1971).