Sand Flight (working title, 2025)

About:

New creation 2025:

Sand Flight deals with our changing relationship to the natural forces due to global warming. In the Bronze Ages in the Nordics, sun-worshipping was an important part of the culture, as observed through archaeological findings such as the Trundholm Sun Chariot (Solvognen) in Denmark. In recent history, urban planning and architecture has been celebrated for the ways in which they maximize access to light. But as temperatures are rising globally, the need for shade-worshipping is on the steps, even in the Nordics.

With Sand Flight, we aim to create a speculation on how this shade-worshipping could take shape in a near future through a quotidian yet ritualistic performance. The performance will take place outdoor in urban public space on a 6m high constructed sand dune which partially covers existing structures/architecture. This installation/scenography is inspired by the Danish phenomenon of sand-flight (sandflugt) where the migrating sand dune Råbjerg Mile gradually moves north-east with the wind as much as 18m per year.

In Sand Flight, the constructed sand dune seems to have emerged from the old seabed under us, as a reminiscent of the early history of the city as well as a speculation into a possible future where cities have been atomized to grains of sand. It highlights how quickly our local environments might change under an ever more scorching sun and such the impermanence of our cities/lives/civilization. The dune hosts atoms of myriads of past lives as well as current ones.

10 performers and a large choir will be moving and singing on and around the sand dune, where the shade-worshipping takes shape as a negotiation between becoming nature/sand and fighting it and where climate-migration is a Nordic reality. As climate-fiction, the performance speculates on how nature is coming for us now that Modernity’s quest to conquer it has backfired.

Sand Flight Dossier