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When Sandra Drew asked me three years ago to submit a proposal for the Stour Valley Art Project in Kings Wood, I thought for a long time as to what I'd like to place in the forest.
A forest is a place where people commune with the remnants of nature. I didn't want to urbanize it. Rather, I wanted my work to melt with the forest, to be part of it. I decided to plant trees in the wood.
I decided to plant an avenue open only at one end, aligned with the sunset on the longest day of the year. A kind of a accumulator into which solar light would fall and not come out. An accumulator storing - as every forest does - solar energy. The sun would be visible at sunset on the first day of astronomical summer, from the closed end of the avenue, framed by trees as in a tunnel.
Then the question arose, what kind of trees would I like to plant? Fast growing, so that the avenue could soon be accessible to the public?
Or perhaps slow growing but noble, like oaks for example? Then I remembered the yews of Kings Wood. I knew that yew trees grow slowly, but live long.
I decided to counter immediacy and plant yews.
Working on the project, I was aware that it would need to be adjusted to suit the actual terrain. During my stay in Kent in June 1999, I looked for a suitable site for the avenue. It had to satisfy several factors:
- flat ground
- visible horizon
- no need to cut down trees.
The place I considered most appropriate is situated at the top of a hill; the true horizon is sufficiently far away for the sun to be visible a quarter of an hour before astronomical sunset; the site is fairly flat and recently coppiced.
I observed several sunsets and worked out directions. A natural difficulty of the site is the (literally) growing optical horizon, that is the line of chestnut trees on the horizon growing fairly rapidly and cut down every 16-18 years. Bearing this in mind I shaped the avenue to allow for this moving horizon.
When deciding the direction the avenue was to take, in line with the azimuth of sunset
on the longest day of the year, a simple problem emerged: in what year? The longest day of the year falls 'around 24 June'. In 1999 it fell on 21 June. The question also arose of how precise was to be the 'instrument', i.e. the avenue of continually growing trees in a changing environment and with changes in the sun's position over years and centuries.
Since corrections due to the sun's astronomical position became meaningless in comparison to the relatively quick changes in the height of the horizon (the fast-growing chestnuts), I decided to forego too much astronomical perfectionism.
I set the avenue at an angle of 129°,
on the azimuth of sunset on 24 June 2000.
The 24 June was celebrated for centuries in many cultures as an important feast day (Midsummer night). The advantage of this date is its annual repetition, as opposed to the actual longest day of the year.
During conceptualisation of Via Lucem Continens I was thinking about the future.
About the fact that no living person will see the avenue designed by me in its mature shape - and that's how it should be.
About the fact that the avenue will grow (or rather, can grow) for a longer period of time than the history of England. About the fact that the planning of such long periods exceeds human imagination and abilities. About the fact that in ancient times, even if they didn't plan for a long period, they let things last.
About the fact that today human planning doesn't go beyond the prospect of immediate profit, or the next election to parliament, senate,
council, etc.
I go back to the past to reach for the future.
I hope the year 2000 will pass unnoticed in the history of mankind as just another year, not distinguished by anything.
The growing population (overpopulation) of the Earth, the increasing contamination with substances harmful to life, the accumulation of weapons of total destruction, make even me smile doubtfully when I think - the next 4500 years?
Nobody is really surprised that something has a 4500 year-old history, even if it is a growing tree. But trees that are supposed to grow for the next 4500 years? Surely that's absurd!
But why absurd?
To plant the avenue I've chosen Yews.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
I would like to thank the following organisations for their support:
Millenniun Festival
The National Lottery
The Arts Council of England
South East Arts
Kent County Council
Ashford Borough Council
Visiting Arts
Medway Council
Forest Enterprise
Kentish Stour Countryside Projects
Friends of Kings Wood
Special thanks to Sandra and Rebecca Drew, who made this project happen, for their tremendous personal input into the Time Walk project.
PROJECT COMMISIONED BY STOUR VALLEY ART PROJECT
King's Wood, Challock, Kent
t/f +44 (0) 1227 458759
TRANSLATION:
KRYSTYNA MATYJASZKIEWICZ
CITATION:
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA 1988
copyright: LUKASZ SKAPSKI 2000
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