Does a space always have to be built? Can you simply hum a window? Whistle a door? A temporary garden made of light sketches, quick assemblages and short poems that seek to remember and pass on experience.
“A few years ago I chanced upon a man who repairs the city. I spoke with him while he was replacing a broken swing. He took me to a warehouse full of spare parts that he uses to patch up public space. Since then, I run into him everywhere. I see his work in metros and parks and even in other cities.”
– Jozef Wouters
The Japanese book Sakuteiki: Visions of the Japanese Garden is almost a thousand years old. It is a compilation of knowledge and experience, passed down through the centuries by word of mouth, about the layout of gardens in the Heian age. “Follow your first idea/ and then/ for all that flows out of that/ follow your heart”. Yet it is not a guidebook. Instead of diagrams and sketches, the book contains only text: stories, poems and mysterious instructions about warding off dragons, tigers and ghosts.
With A Day Is a Hundred Years, Jozef Wouters elaborates upon that book. At Decoratelier in Molenbeek, he enlists the help of technicians, musicians and poets to give shape to a world of fragile structures that consist primarily of care and devotion. Does a space always have to be built? Can you simply hum a window? Whistle a door? A Day Is a Hundred Years is a temporary garden made of light sketches, quick assemblages and short poems that seek to remember and pass on experience.
Credits
in collaboration with
- Barry Ahmad Talib
- Enzo Smits
- Michiel Soete
- Marie Umuhoza
- Menno Vandevelde
- e.a.