The Plot

In the early 1960s, my grandfather bought a small forest near the village where he was born. Being from a Catholic farmer’s family in the south of the Netherlands, my grandparents produced an impressive number of offspring – all of which familiar with het bosje (the little forest), as we would call it. In my childhood, we would have picnics there, and later on we would regularly visit the little forest to see how it was evolving. After my grandparents died, it was inherited by my mother. She’s the current owner, and my partner in crime.

In September 2019, the little forest had to be cleared after the trees died due to a beetle plague, and it transformed into The Plot. The Plot has become an arena for artistic research, functioning as a lens to investigate greater ecological issues. It now embodies ecological grief.

In 2020, the global upheaval of a virus added multiple dimensions to The Plot. We need to find ways to deal with issues that are beyond a human scale, and that resonate beyond our lifetime. 

At the moment, The Plot is slowly being prepared for regeneration: a road that leads far beyond the horizon of my lifetime. There are many questions as to where to begin, what to set as targets, and how to proceed. A special role lies in building a mythology around The Plot. This proves to come easy: despite its relatively poor geological composition, The Plot turns out to be a quite fertile land for the imagination.