from The Land Use Project
Solarium
2006
Wanås Foundation,
Knislinge, Sweden
logs, willow branches,
6 speakers, peat,
15 minute looped cd.
dimensions variable
This video represents the audio heard while reclined on the chaise. One speaker is embedded into each log chaise.
technical: Solarium is a sculpture and audio installation installed in the forest of the Wanås Foundation. It consists of 6 chaise longues modeled after Corbusier’s chaise longue arranged in a large circle under a canopy of tall trees. Materials for the construction of the chaises include indigenous wood, and willow branches. A speaker embedded in each chaise plays the same 15 minute audio narrative. The audio, two voices, tell the story of a woman’s journey to a place of convalescence while a male narrator prefaces each section with the position of the sun in the sky as well as historical references to sun therapy. Two of the chaises are aligned with the position of the sun at sunset on the summer solstice.
content: Solarium provides a respite from the art park cantor. It is a place for visitors to recline, look up and recognize the simple nature - the canopy that is the forest - the reverent sun. Beginning with a history of labor on this Wanås property, Solarium starts with the forestry reference in the chaise construction being that of a simple log pile and from there creates a therapeutic treatment-like space. The clean quality of the air and the bucolic landscape in the Wanås area have made it an ideal location for sanatoriums such as the one in nearby Orup. As sanatoriums may seem a thing of the past, the developing spa culture has reintroduced it. Of course this earlier version of the destination spa required that a ‘patient’ be ‘diagnosed’ and that they be checked-in to the treatment center with a doctors supervision. The destination spa of today gives anyone an opportunity to sit down and relax - while still referring to things as ‘treatments’, but performed on ‘guests’ (not patients) by ‘aesthetiticians’ (not doctors). I am very interested in today’s individualistic society where every seeming difficulty may be diagnosed as a syndrome and a treatment is then recommended.