HARALD SCHOLE

The ROUNDABOUT of LIVING

The Art of Settlement (home sweet home)
Departing from different disciplines Van Haaften & Schole worked together on several art projects.

to settle without losing the adventure
Already centuries long mankind has known a nomidac existence. We are in origin nomads. To settle has always had a desire to ‘’the green hills’’ on the other side of the horizon. That kind of unrest comes forward during our public holidays and our trips to the beach, the mountains or the house in the fields. For many others there is the urgent need to build a better existance in another region: better is the golden hope. The Art of Settlement is more than finding different caravanserails in the living – career or track. It has to do with finding identity in the midst of others. The art of finding a good location, an environment where well-being and prosperity are within reach. A location with a view on a future location. The quest of identity or self-will also has a frame and borders. Borders in relation to others, preferably transparant, without visas and equal.

To settle is digging a hole on the beach knowing that by the end of the day, after high tide, is is gone. To settle is to discover who you are, your family, your neighbours and your friends. On one hand it has openess and clings to the doubts of the nomadic aspect, it is static and role models or patterns are being introduced. The nomadic existance is reduced to standing with your car in the endless queus. The power of settlement is the art to remain open.

nomadic settlement & vice versa
Sometimes people and thoughts are on drift and new tracks or new ways are being searched; to the unknown, better world. With quests and journeys, migration and new concepts are spread out. Finally a thought is picked up and carried onward and developed. Step by step, jump after jump a process of conquest takes place in which ideas are well-comed warmly or observed with scepic eyes. To move is not necessarely a momentum of pure luck, on the contary it has to do with displacement and re-orientation of values. Also without leaving the house or the continent the notion of a nomadic existence is present. The discovery of and the passing of knowledge starts in our early years of childhoud.

the roundabout of living
Our proposal contains the presenation of some home-elements as for instance a door, a table, a bed or a chair. These objects from the interior treaded by us with paint, are hanging in the roundabout. Sometimes straight, sometimes tilted or upsidedown, relativing thus the settlement. It will be recognizable and yet different. The artwork is a four meters high. The axis of the roundabout is a robust tree, standing firmly in the ground. An iron circle from the top of the object expands in broader rings to rthe bottom. This iron circle has a connecting function in physical and visual as well as mental regard. It is like a support of inhabitants participation

wishes of living
The design of the artwork raises questions about settling, the quest for identity. In our project that specific question is conveyed actively to the inhabitants and can be answered by them. We hand over to the inhabitants a long banner with a printed text: my wishes of living :………..

With a permanent the inhabitants can express their wishes of living. These personal wishes, colored, are being tied , by us to the roundabout. The banners of the inhabitants perfect the artwork. The many wishes give a common desire to the idea of living. The artwork transforms from a naked presentation to a loaded, bannered object.

the layers of senses
The trunk of the tree in the middle seeming to stand halfway in the soil, is aiming with the top in the ground, which is usual with piles. The work contains apart from its actual significance layers about building, the construction of boyish cottages, settling and a reference to the Classic Antiquity. The bed is nested around the tree. A symbol derived from the bed-chamber of Odyssee and Penelope. Their bed was according to the myth build in a tree. Odyssee returnes home after twenty years of wandering at his magic isle of Ithaka. Penelope has been faithfull to her husband in all these years. After a trick and struggle against the waylayers of Penelope the reunion of the two takes place. Odyssee is home.

Joost van Haaften
Harald Schole