nadine @Kunstvlaai

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After a night in the festivity space of the community the mother of Martha makes us a real power breakfast. We decide to ask some questions about the village Xerdiz. She was born and raised there and has seen the village change tremendously. The windmills in the hills, the Eucalyptus trees that were not there before and the loss of different plants are amongst her most important changes of the landscape in her life. She explains us that the village of Xerdiz works as a cooperative, sharing food, livestock and communal buildings. She insists we visit the cemetery across the Taberna and hands us a huge key to open it’s door. The cemeteries in this area are enclosed spaces where small gravestones are stacked upon each other, almost like flats in a city with a cross on top. A local sculptor handcrafted all the sculptures of the graves, which gives the cemetery of Xerdiz a very unified look. The cemetery was build in the beginning of the last century and seemed to be a joint initiative of the villagers. A metal plate lists beautifully how much gold, silver or iron people invested in the construction around 1905.

Our journey of the the day begins with a huge climb to the next village Viveiro. It looks quite deserted and is not bigger then a square and a same kind of cemetery then Xerdiz. We climb even further in the mountains until we reach …. Where we take a break to avoid the midday heat. At Casa Maria we explore the local beverages (Kas and Okay) and ask the people present (Maria, who tens the bar, and an old 78 year old couple) about their experience with the changing of the landscape. They explain us how the windmills brought over a period of eight years different nationalities, French, Dutch, to their small village who worked on the windmill project. The promises made by the government that their energy bills would go down with the windmills providing clean energy were not kept, and after 8 years when the windmills were ready, the village was deserted again leaving mostly old people, since the youngsters leave the village for jobs outside of Spain as far as Brasil and China. Trying to leave with a positive note after our discussion we ask the 78 year old lady at the best recipes of the region. She immediately springs to life. It’s a special vegetable soup and a dish with wild boar that is called “javalli”. She’s offering to make us some food, but we unfortunately have to continue the fold now the sun is less sharp.

To our surprise the next 20km are quite flat surfaced, entering the valley of the sierra de … and we reach the village Cospeito known for its lakes. We decide to get a pick nick and place to sleep around the lake, but mosquito experiences from the past drive us bit further away to the next village where the lovely Pilar and Jose offer us to put our tents, hammocks and sleeping bags in their garden. They invite us for a late evening talk at their house and curiously ask us what we are doing. The fact that we are not artists as painters or sculptors leads to a nice definition of a contemporary default artist: like painters painting the landscape, we are explorers in and of that landscape communicating our experience along the line and to the outside world with our works.

nadine was invited by Kunstvlaai to participate at their event in Amsterdam. All artists initiatives presented an artwork in the Amstelpark. nadine invited Various Artist Bernard Leroy to show his Drowning Bonsai-work in progress.

Kunstvlaai is a multi-day celebration of art(ist-run) initiatives. Every two years, Kunstvlaai provides initiatives a platform to meet, discuss, and exchange ideas. This tenth edition takes place in the Amstelpark, an extensive park in Amsterdam. Critical engagement with space and alternative approaches to production and exhibition formats are central for Kunstvlaai 2014, corresponding to its unconventional location.

Kunstvlaai stimulates artistic production by inviting initiatives to realize site-specific art works that will be on view during the event itself. Around 50 local and foreign art initiatives present themselves by means of a spatial intervention in the Amstelpark. Spaces in Dialogue, a three-day programme of round-table discussions, facilitates new dialogue between initiatives.