AVANT LA LETTRE ‘Y’

The reason for this is the intention of GAE (Groningen Airport Eelde) to convert the area around the runways into a solar farm.

By mowing the grass in the contours of the runways, the accidental location and orientation of the runways will form the twenty-fifth letter of the alphabet, “Y”, on the earth’s surface. In an international context, the letter “Y” is pronounced as “waai”… “WHY”, the question that precedes all knowledge and progress. The question that every child asks. Now that concise question is being 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” …before there is what? …before there are solar panels at an airport? …before there are 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 parallel strips at the end of May/beginning of June 2016. The low morning or evening light sweeps across the earth’s surface and “finishes” the drawing. Aerophoto Eelde captured this gigantic drawing on the earth’s surface from the air at just the right light.

In the tradition of “classic” Land Art, the photographic reflection of this project is the end product. A 3×4 metre photograph was exhibited during INTO NATURE 2016 in the departure hall of GAE and combined as a triptych with equally large photographs of the illustrious examples from Land art Canceled Crop (Finsterwolde 1969) by Dennis Oppenheim and Broken Circle and Spiral Hill by Robert Smithson (Emmen 1971).