MASS #2

MASS #2 is a poetic, moving landscape. A graphite-grey mass flows slowly as if it was water. The matter appears light and yet heavy at the same time. And, as if tectonic plates are interacting, the spectator sees mountains and valleys created before his eyes, only to dissolve in the next instant. A living landscape, geology in a time-lapse. 

Just as in MASS #1, it could be the ‘situation’ of the dawn of time, although there is no divine creator in the vicinity. This matter moves autonomously, determines its own energy. We are witness to geological and physical processes in which, both by coincidence and without interruption, organic changes take place. It could also be the end; a landscape without human presence, which goes its own way. The end of mankind is not the end of the world.

MASS #2 was a part of Conversations (at the end of the world). The grey landscape is the environment in which the characters find themselves. This environment is so all-qualifying that it could be called the main character. It is an entity that does not tolerate anything next to it. The movement of the landscape controls the rhythm and imagines the approaching catastrophe. The people in this landscape have no other choice but to take this into account and eventually go along with it. A solitary beauty is left with new rules, beyond human ones. Time and language are no more. MASS II is a continuous transition from creation to disappearance and once again to creation, an endless, unpredictable metamorphosis from chaos to order and back.

Throughout history humanity has always had an impact on his environment. And with a delayed effect, this changed landscape has in its turn impacted on the human who has to adapt to it, from sheer necessity, sometimes full of self-pity. We build a dam, we build cities on the newly created land, the dam collapses after a time and we drown, full of disbelief. Should there already be a “narrative” to be found in human history, then it is probably that of a changing landscape. The “tipping-points” in the climate warming are not there to be felt immediately. However, the insurmountable consequences of a geologic era that we now have to name after ourselves will affect all of humanity. In the anthropocene nature reveals itself as a catastrophe, writes the philosopher Timothy Morton. The consequences of the anthropocene might not be predictable at this moment in time but we will have to adapt whatever the case. Full of disbelief, we will have to suffer the consequences of our self-created ecologic disaster.