Monday, October 15, 2007

Bavarian Bonsai Days 2007 - part 10

I did tree critiques around the clock, delivered awards and all such stuff. Then the lady of the hotel cam up and said that she had an absolutely dead larch forest in her garden. They had a waiter who wold consume a lot of free coffee in his breaks and as a habit poured the rest into the forest until it died. The waiter does not work there anymore.

So what to do with this forest??
We had the wild idea to make this a demo. I planted a large tree into it which is a survivor and a few small and very small ones which apparently came after the disaster.

The title of this important piece of art: " Le Waldsterben, eine deutsche Gemütskrankheit". This is very hard to translate. First of all I use the article 'le' which is French for the term 'Waldsterben' which is untranslatable into most languages and means 'dying forests'. For a couple fo decades many Germans were under the impression that the world is going under and the so beloved German forests are dying. This mood was engineered by the greens, of course. Like nowadays with climate change everybody here was speaking about the dyingng forests. Well, twenty years later they are still here. The French call this a German mental disorder, they never believed that their forests are dying.

So this is a statement meaning that while parts of forests can and will die and it is our fault, but nature is so much stronger than we are. The forests will come back and be there when we are no more. This was a fun demonstration, not to be taken too seriously. But quite a few folks came up to me and discussed this with me in all earnest.

The lady of the house gave me a free lunch. Well, there is no such thing a s a free lunch, or is there?

Uli mentioned that Nick Lenz would be delighted an add a couple of turned over oil barrels which apparently were the cause of all evil here. And he would place a dwarf lying on his stomach and a long pointed kitchen knife in his back. Oh Nick, I wish you were there.




1 comment:

Aaron Khalid said...

Very interesting...

Taking bonsai to the next level with a project like this one (rich in substance and artistic expression) is a sure way to silence those who insist that bonsai is a craft, and not an art form.

kudos