Title: MOVING GARDEN

Date: 2016

Medium: Stills of performances

Artist: Anika Barkan and Helene Kvint – CoreAct

Exhibition: Blue Sky Gardening, 2021

From press release:

Anika Barkan and Helene Kvint – CoreAct, MOVING GARDEN – A positive disturbance in public spaces

CoreAct work with interdisciplinary performative practice using ‘positive disturbance’ and ‘mobile scenography’. CoreAct collects personal stories from people in public and private spaces. They work with an aesthetic and artistic interpretation of documentary material with interaction between facts and fiction. A MOVING GARDEN in the area surrounding Mecklenburg Square Garden – the various communities of Cromer Street, Brunswick Centre, outside King’s Cross station – is proposed.

Previous MOVING GARDENS include:

MOVING GARDEN Ramallah: IMAGES 1, 2 and 3

MOVING GARDEN Ramallah was created and developed by CoreAct in collaboration with local artist/activist Raya Ziada and ecologist Saad Dagher.

MOVING GARDEN Ramallah became a multifaceted project that developed along the way in relationship to the people involved in the project. Besides the original idea of walking with gardens and the collection of stories, the project also became a platform for sharing knowledge of agro-ecology, sustainable farming, independence through growing one’s own food and piracy gardening.

In all its simplicity, we believe that a project like MOVING GARDEN can create a temporary respite — a positive disturbance — a meeting place where human connections and our relationship to nature is in focus — a place where dreams are heard. Through performative means and sensory experiences, memories are awoken.

“My father wakes us up at 3 am. It is still dark outside. My job is to put the saddles on the donkeys while my brother brings the big baskets filled with the grapes we picked yesterday. My father lifts me up on the donkey. I am not tall enough to get up by myself. That special click from my father’s tongue makes the donkeys start walking out of our village into the landscape. Millions of stars are flickering above us. At first we ride in silence. Then as the sun starts rising, my father starts singing of the beauty of our land.”

MOVING GARDEN Copenhagen: IMAGES 4 and 5

Over a period of ten days, we walked 22 kilometers through the streets of Copenhagen with the garden dancing behind us. Every night we parked the garden in front of a housing complex, so when people woke up and went outside their door, they were met by a garden instead of parked cars. We would inhabit the garden and invite people for a rest and a cup of fresh mint tea. During these meetings we would listen to people’s dreams and stories about their gardens. At the end of our ten days walk we left the garden in front of the Royal Library in Copenhagen for one month. We created a sound collage of all the wonderful stories we had heard, which passers by could sit down and listen to while resting in the Garden.

“With sleepy eyes I am opening the front door of my house – another day – I didn’t sleep well. I almost stumble – a garden – in front of my house – inhabited by a strange animal – AM I DREAMING?

A friendly woman asks me if I want to sit down for a cup of tea – I forget all about time – and sit down in the garden. The smell of lavender hits my nostrils, and a steaming hot fresh mint tea is placed in my hands.

The woman asks me – what is your first memory of a garden? And the memory hits me by surprise.

It is a late summer night the sun is still high on the Scandinavian sky. I am 6 or 7 years old, visiting my grandparents in their ramshackle house. Tango music is played in the garden next door, I peek through the hedge and the old couple that live there are dancing a passionate tango on their 2 by 3 meter small terrace.

You know what I would do if I had a garden… I would fill it up with sweet corn – nothing else”

Website:

www.coreact.dk

Instagram:

@anikakbarkan

@helenekvint