LOLA

Paradise is an idealized landscape, a projection of desires. It fills in what is missing in the everyday landscape. As society changes, so do it’s deficits and desires. In western urban societies, water, food and safety have become self-evident, and a new and much more basic shortage has arisen: contact with nature. For a long time, the longing for nature was the reason for distant journeys – initiated by pioneers, scientists, artists, and followed by growing crowds of travellers.

But this exotic, individualistic and unsustainable paradise is slowly creating space for a local and collective alternative. The grey urban space is cracking up and façade gardens, neighbourhood gardens, roof gardens and food gardens are popping up everywhere. Paradise lies beneath the paving stones. Primeval vegetation is bursting out of the urban ground.

300 million years ago, ferns and tree ferns grew in the Netherlands. They took CO2 out of the atmosphere and sequestered it in the soil. This is how the fossil fuels we use today were created. It is these plants, that are used as resources for fossil fuels, that are contributing to climate change. For more and more city dwellers, the search for paradise no longer begins with a plane journey, but at the moment they step out of their door; in the street. In the city, a kind of clearing frenzy of hardening has arisen to make room for clarity.

Paradise is where you are not. Paradise gardens require framing – separating the everyday environment from the idealized reality. A generic gray urban space forms the frame of the installation.