Plateau Blo
Gmunden, Austria 2024
Arriving in Gmunden in the first days of autumn, the lake and the mountains are changing their face. The city, after the summer visitors departure, is now calm and introspective.
The private boats that once filled the water with leisure scenes are now in land, suspended by metal structures and covered in waterproof tarps and tight elastics, ready for the winter hibernation. In the period of one week the leafs go from green to yellow, brown, red. The lake wakes up every day with a different motion and colour tones, and every day different masses of vapour hang over the water, filtering the sunlight, while the mountains slowly fade in and out on the background.
Autumn season and its changing bodies seem to be proposing different relations towards the water, beyond the domesticated and privatised docks of the Traumsee shores.
During the residence, together with Sophie Netzer and Kerstin Reyer, as we work through stormy and sunny days, we realised that if everyday we walk by the lake, the lake tells us its state of mind, never the same. If everyday we dive into the water, the touch and temperature of the lake will affect our body. The state of mind of the landscape will be ours too.
The floating platforms should also provide for an experience that endures in time. Maybe what we are looking for is a condition of comfort, a garment, a way for the individual body to be safe enough to be able to the relate to the other bodies: the body of water, the body of land containing the water, the body of air shifting according to the temperatures, the collective body of people gathering around the space. So it would be about enduring time, waiting, struggling at times, but gently slowing down, getting closer to the ground like in japanese tea houses, bowing as you enter, accommodating the bodies to the shapes and edges like soft sleeves.
And maybe it is also about waiting in the question and not in the answer, providing without defining. To generate an initial condition which keeps the agency fertile and open to be unfolded by future events.
Credits:
Concept:
João Gonçalo Lopes
Construction:
João Gonçalo Lopes, Kerstin Reyer, Sophie Netzer
Production
Kerstin Reyer, Sophie Netzer, Simone Barlian
Overall project:
Plateau Blo
Organization:
Salzkammergut 2024, European Capital of Culture
University of Art and Design Linz
Thanks to:
Markus Hiesleitner, Guilherme Rodrigues , Pedro Augusto, Li Wang