“Art is the lie that reveals reality.” Jeroen Brouwers - “Culture, considered as a process, means acquiring a vast deal of useless knowledge, and then forgetting it.” Albert Jay Nock - “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” Douglas Huebler - “In life and in art one has to begin each day anew.” Louis Couperus



Title: Nothing but the sea between us
2011




photos by: Sjaak Langenberg and Dick Mol
photomontages: Rosé de Beer

Project developed at the invitation of artists-initiative Satellietgroep, The Hague.





HARWICH/HOOK OF HOLLAND – Ten thousand years ago the North Sea was undergoing a period of global warming. In the time prior to that, sea level was so low that woolly mammoths, sabre tooth tigers, horses, rhinoceros and hyenas could walk across from England to The Netherlands. The sea bed is strewn with fossils, some of which are exhibited in museums. During an artists’ residency on both sides of the North Sea, Sjaak Langenberg and Rosé de Beer developed a plan to set up one of the North Sea ferries as an annex to these museums. Owing to the length of the crossing, people would have more time to look at the zoological artefacts than in a regular museum. By incorporating fossils into the interior design, or even by adapting the interior to the forms of the fished-up skeletons, mammoths can posthumously walk up and down between England and The Netherlands again.
The plans are being further developed in consultation with Naturalis, the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden.

© Sjaak Langenberg & Rosé de Beer