Presentation: December 21st, 2023
The project Paradise Garden H’ Groene Veld has been developed during Peng Zhang’s residency at Het Groene Veld, as part of the EU project ‘Artistic Ecologies: New Compasses, Tools and Alliances’ – a collaboration between the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam, WHW, Zagreb and Moabit, Berlin. Peng developed a performance inspired by the landscape and the community surrounding him at Het Groene Veld and mingled these elements with his memories related to the land in China, where he grew up in a farmer community that survived based on the principles of the commons. Peng loves to be in the fields surrounding his temporary mobile unit where he resides at Het Groene Veld but needed to revisit his usual ways of working at the land, and with the soil, as it was too cold. Inspired by the squatter community around him that is very much involved in theatrical practices, he thought of using the landscape as scenery for a winter performance. Central in Peng’s performative intervention is an old Chinese song for children. The song refers to a dream about the possibility of planting a sun and maybe more as one, and then these suns will warm up the world. While performing a shadow cast roleplay using his own body and drawings behind six different screens that form an installation in the green fields, the artist will sing to nature and pray for fertility. The project is about our interaction with the land and the current situation in our world. How do we learn to listen to the needs of the soil and nature? How do we reconnect with the land and learn how to interact with it? Peng is going back to the roots to revisit the relationship a human being can have with the land.