Grey Alder

Text curator Edith Doove 

For Watou festival 2023 Esther developed an installation within the
scope of LANDSCAPES | Feel Flanders Fields. For this purpose she read
and watched testimonials from soldiers on both sides of the front line
during WWI, such as the controversial writer Ernst Jünger. Her main
interest lies in the description of sounds and soundscapes consisting of
background noises, static and auditory hallucinations. Moments of
severe intensity alternate with absolute silence, as illustrated aptly
by the recent blockbuster ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. One soldier
testifies that he listens much more than he hears. At 11 a.m. on 11
November 1918, the war violence abruptly ceases. All of a sudden, the
world goes dead quiet.

Venrooij translated all of this into a very layered work method.
Together with performer Niels Demeirleir Venrooij worked on a series of
gestures inspired by listening to the erstwhile war landscape around
Ypres and Watou. For instance, looking up and listening while lying flat
on the ground, legs bent and head turned to the side, whispering or
leaning against a tree.

Audiovisual recordings of this site-specific performance were made with film maker Ans Mertens. In turn, these formed the basis for a series of large overlapping line drawings as a kind of ‘dual images’. For the quadrophonic sound installation through four speakers Venrooij not only listened to the surrounding former war landscape, but also drew inspiration from historic audio and visual material.

During her field research in the Ypres region Esther Venrooij, in addition to the ‘scars in the landscape’, also found several other first-hand witnesses of the total destruction: trees. ‘Grey Alder’ represents a species of birch that was once quite common in the region.