The Siebold Garden was designed as an environmental art project within the Setouchi Triennial (2013) in collaboration with Pat van Boeckel and garden-artists Naito and Kawaguchi. In a rundown orchard and dormitory we created a story with video, environmental sculpture and landart around the Dutch botanist Von Siebold, who brought most of the nowadays garden plants from Japan to Europe.
Siebold’s heritage is food for thought about nature and science, about nature and ownership, about the botanical link between Japan and Europe and about cultural and economical globalism. These themes underlay the Siebold Garden on Honjima. We covered the concrete house in traditional blackened wood and from the front window a landslide with plants came down, flowing into the garden. It symbolized the movement of history, bringing a wealth of plants to Europe The landart piece was also an invitation to come inside the house, where bits of the Siebold history are woven into the world of imagination in 5 video installations, while seed-sculptures were placed in the garden, house and entrance road.
