Drowned Land (The Archaeological Dig)

Admittedly, an installation I am quite proud of... Within Compagnie KAiET!, I realized this visual and narrative site-specific project. The entire project originated from my mind, and up to 173 (!) people contributed to it from near or far. A rather insane project that we even took across the ocean...

We were able to build/create it at three different locations: in 2007 in Antwerp (on a construction site next to the Central Station), in 2008 on the Dutch island of Terschelling (in the forest *and* the dunes near the 'Little Lake of Hee'), and in 2009 on Governors' Island, New York.

At each location, we built an exhibition featuring 'archaeological finds', 'old newspaper articles', and 'historical maps'. Additionally, there was an 'archaeological site' where visitors could come and look (and manipulate all kinds of finds) so that, like a real archaeologist, you could piece together the true story using all those 'discoveries'. It was the same project at all three of those locations, with the same installations, but adapted each time to local customs and history—a matter of making the story believable:

After all, there was a small hamlet at that spot (Goeverdinge (BE), Goeverdingum (NL), Goverthing (U.S.A.)) that had to be evacuated in haste in May 1954 due to the risk of explosion. Residents could no longer return; for safety reasons, the hamlet was covered under many layers of sand. Until we—many years later—saw down the site with a team of 'archaeologists,' uncovered it again, and were able to uncover the true story behind that forced evacuation.

That turned out to be a dramatic love story: there was, after all, a gas station, belonging to José and his wife 'the Nightingale of Goeverdinge' (she could sing so beautifully!). However, she fell in love with a trucker who passed by there daily (because he did transport for a small snow globe factory from that hamlet). She disappeared with him.

José sat in despair. He started building birdhouses under the motto "if you spoil what can fly, what has flown away might just come back." He built many hundreds of them and hung them all up around his gas station. That effectively attracted a great many birds. At times, the newspapers spoke of a veritable plague. Those birds dropped all sorts of things: the ammonia combined with the nearby fuel became highly explosive, hence the evacuation.

The public—equipped with high-visibility vests and safety helmets—was allowed to visit the 'archaeological site,' discover the exhibition, and view the excavation (where we had already 'excavated' up until then). There, they discovered the 'excavated' remains of that snow globe factory, the church tower, chimneys of village houses, a garage, a water tower, streetlights, electricity pylons...

A crazy project that landed me on the front page of The New York Times. New York Magazine even named this project (The Archaeological Dig) one of the 5 most surprising art projects in the Big Apple that year! (2009).