This sculpture was developed for the danish-german travelling exhibition “Surfing the great Tsunami – Anthrocaene Manifestationer”. My preliminary remarks: The Anthropocene-metaphor may help to add a critical perspective to the quasi-religious status that an economic and monetary valuation of nature has gained recently, a fact that might turn out to be responsible for a profound decrease of our intrinsic values of nature and the planet. The dominant discourse about unlimited consumption as a driver of growth involves the commodification and marketization of nature. Nature is suddenly being treated as the biggest enterprise on earth – with geologically visible effects that lead to the coining of the term ‘Anthropocene’. Among the possibilities to react … my take on this subject for the exhibition is one of a revaluation of nature – in the form of an interactive installations. The visitor will be involved in an interaction with a domesticated nature that turns the roles upside down and invites for repentence.
The installation contains a traditional christian confessional (Beichtstuhl) with left and right entrances for two sinners. Instead of a priest there is a tree planted in the middle compartment. The tree represents a domesticated nature. Visitors of the exhibition are invited to kneel down alternatingly in one of the boxes separated from the public through curtains and and confess their environmental sins to the tree who will (hopefully) absolve them silently.
