Bos-Grens
Senders Lars
My name is Kris Drieghe, I work as an architect in Belgium for my own small firm Holarchitecten. I mix architecture with building small public interventions, tutoring international workshops and curating participatory interventions in public space. The architecture projects are mostly single family houses. In 2018 I've joined a workshop of Raumlabor Berlin in Bruges. There my interest in the social impact of building together got aroused. Since then I've worked on several projects to experiment with this concept. I've build some installations for local organisations. I've joined a building workshop in Jena, Germany: 72hoursurbanaction.
In Hungary I've tutored a workshop for Hello Wood. I've tutored a summer school for the university of Kassel in Germany. This summer I'm tutoring a project in Armenia for Meds. I believe in the concept of learning by doing and empowering people by giving them the chance to contribute to an artistic intervention.
Last year, we formed the multidisciplinary art collective Hrins to realise a participatory project in my birth region. By joining forces, more layers could be added on the building aspect such as storytelling and music. This way the social impact was more diverse and the range of people who were involved was wider.
Since 2021 the city of Sint-Niklaas in Belgium, appointed me as curator to convert the space under a railway bridge in the city centre. Together with motivated partners, we managed to organise a participatory process on a city scale. The main goal was to involve as much people as possible by working on different fields and over a long period of time.
To summarize, I like to encourage the social process of building togehter to make a common future.
Bos-Grens; the soundwalk takes you on a journey trough nature, sound-art, stories and land-art. Inspired by the heritage of the past and the experiences of the present, you walk on and over the border of Belgium and the Netherlands through the forests of Clinge (NL) and De Klinge (BE).
The Bos-Grens app will guide you on the route on which you find 10 ‘borderbenches’ and 2 art installations, co-created with locals, build with the dead trees of the forest. There you can listen to the soundtracks.
All the installations are build with the same modular element. The element was made out of dead pine trees, cut in a specific way so they could be connected and stacked. The result is geometric shape with a very organic texture. The elements blend into the environment but stand out by the atypical design.
The trees died because of drought and the Ips typographus. By re-using the wood, we wanted to raise the awareness of the fragile natural environment combined with the aspect of bringing people together across the border.
By adding the building process to the project, people of both sides of the border
could connect by actually making something togother. We organized single-day workshops for locals and ended with a building week where the international people joined the process.
A lot of people shared their 'borderstory' which we recorded during interview sessions. A selection of the recordings was transformed into unique border soundtracks. These soundtracks were allocated to specific locations on the border.
A beacon which links the locations to the soundtracks is integrated in the installations. This way, the visitor connects with the app and starts the soundtrack of the specific location.
The project is owned by the local people, visitors like the personal content and the specific environment. It's not about big historical facts, but recognisable emotions. The geometrical shapes of the installations catch they eye with ease along the path.