JASPER WIEDEMAN

Municipal Transport Company (GVB) | Jasper Wiedeman (1963, Amsterdam, Netherlands)

A major theme in Jasper Wiedeman’s photographic work is botanical still-lifes. In 2002 he began to cultivate the subjects of his photographs himself. Gardening became part of his work process.

Wiedeman was initially approached for a commission to make photographs of the Zuidas. Later it turned out that growing a garden was also a possibility within the scope of the Zuidas Free Spaces project. Wiedeman's eye fell on the area in the Zuidas where the tunnel for the southerly ring road and train and metro tracks will eventually be laid. This strip of land will form the central axis of the Zuidas, with buildings as high as 100 meters rising above it. Now the terrain of the GVB municipal transport company, this area is practically the Zuidas in miniature. Here you already begin to get the feeling that this is the city of the future.

On a small patch of ground behind sheds for public transport workers near the Zuid-WTC Station, surrounded by trains and trams and the traffic racing by on the A10 and the buildings under construction, Jasper Wiedeman is laying out a garden – and registering this process and its results in a series of photographs.

At the Mercy of the Elements in the Zuidas
Jasper Wiedeman

The intervention that I am doing in this place is alienating and bizarre. As I work, I carry out a kind of theatre performance for the travellers who stand around and watch me from the platforms. You can't really see very well what I'm doing from there because of the difference in height. All that’s visible is a little man in a yellow safety suit who is messing around in a strange place. On the other hand, when I take photographs it’s suddenly very specific. Then I stand behind a large camera, working from a sort of podium. What I am doing on this terrain, my Free Space, is actually very theatrical. Gardening is a performance, an organic happening that in fact cannot be captured.

Wanting to have a garden and living in the city are two incompatible things. If you have enough money, you can buy a place outside the city. I am aware that my project also refers to the gradually disappearing allotment gardens, which are often situated next to railway tracks and are meant for the financially weak. While I was digging and cutting sod, the sort of heavy work they still do in the Third World, I realized this even more. People squat patches of land here and there, and in America you have initiatives like the Green Guerrilla, who create places in the city where entire neighbourhoods can cultivate gardens and be involved, based on the idea of community building.

Temporary gardening, what I'm doing now, is also a strange contradiction. Normally I would be engaged in a process that takes years, but now I am working in a kind of migratory fashion. We don't have that phenomenon in the Netherlands anymore. The physical aspect of working at this site also contributes to this. It's not a place where you can take a break and comfortably relax in a folding chair.

Yet for me, being busy here is not only work. It's also a vital necessity. It's about the feeling of being connected with the earth. Because working in the ground, working with plants, has brought me back to a fundamental knowledge of life that we city people have totally lost. It's also the knowledge of plants and their medicinal effect. This work is very direct and brings me back to the essence, to life itself.

My Free Space is a laboratory situation for me, because I have never had to deal with these kinds of conditions before. For instance, I don't know exactly what sort of soil this is. The ground has probably been raised and levelled with sand from the sea, which means that it is very rich in calcium, but also very dry and lacking in nutrients. It is a unique situation and I don't know exactly what will happen.

I have laid out three large beds and am now trying to figure out what might grow in them. I'm using the native and adventitious plants as a guideline, the opportunists that have hopped over the tracks. In a large circle in the middle I am trying to make a kind of enclosed garden.

It’s bizarre, and impossible to record, but Mahler4 is really shooting out of the ground. It goes up so fast it's almost scary. It’s clear that my actions are the exact opposite of what’s going on around me. I'm busy with little flowers amongst these tall buildings rising up here. Although perhaps it's not such a great contrast after all – I am intervening too, but on a different scale. I am busily moving grains of sand and planting flowers that perhaps don't want to grow here, or are not even able to grow here. And then they will die. Thus as far as material is concerned there are very big contrasts. Likewise with tempo. The construction of a tall building goes faster than the growth of a plant.

I wrote somewhere in my application for this project that I wanted to arouse a feeling of alienation in the viewer, but of course I myself am struck by the greatest feeling of alienation.

It’s not just about looking, it’s also about experiencing. I want to grab people by the ears, make them look at the ground and say: See how tremendously beautiful that little flower is! If you're a Christian, you'll say, "It has been given to us by God," if you're a New Ager, you'll say, "It has been given to us by Mother Earth," but in the final analysis it comes down to the small gesture, the incredible beauty of it.

It’s a kind of ode, a ritual that I am carrying out, which is about concentration. An ant that is hauling grains of sand. As far as the plants are concerned, we'll just have to see. Maybe nothing will grow at all. I am at the mercy of the elements, even here, in the middle of the Zuidas. And in this controlled environment that’s the beauty of it all.

FREE SPACES ARTISTS (AIR)