State of Wander podwalk

1  OPENING

CATHELIJNE

"What would happen if you opened up a historic palace to artists who ask difficult questions? Who don't just preserve, but challenge?"

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

CATHELIJNE

My name is Cathelijne Blok, welcome to the Podwalk State of Wander at Paleis Het Loo. In this introduction episode I speak with two people who know this project from the inside: Anna Bitkina, the curator and initiator of State of Wander, and Renske Ek, curator of the gardens of Paleis Het Loo and the internal curator of this project.

3  CONTEXT + ANNA

CATHELIJNE

Paleis Het Loo is a place you might think you know. The straight central axis, the baroque gardens, the royal history. But curator Anna Bitkina saw something else here. She saw an archive of the European way of relating to nature. And she asked: what can we learn from that, now that nature is under pressure? I spoke with Anna about where this project comes from.

ANNA BITKINA

"The bigger general framework for this exhibition is to find the way how to translate historical collections such as Palais Het Loo into contemporary discourse. How we can look at this collection which is based on the relation to nature, but in a very specific western, Eurocentric way of looking at the world and nature."

CATHELIJNE

To do that, Anna invited ten international artists and thinkers to spend time here, research the collection, the archives, the gardens, even the cleaning and restoration departments, and respond with new work. The result is ten works spread across the palace and its grounds, each approaching the history of this place from a different angle. From the material legacy of colonialism in the collection, to the sounds of the living landscape, to the question of who owns the land this palace stands on.

ANNA BITKINA

"We went to sessions of the cleaning ladies, people with an enormous amount of tools to clean every little item not to damage them, and when they finish, they start over again. At the same time they restore things for centuries to come, while outside there are dramatic processes happening with the natural environment. I found that tension fascinating."

4  RENSKE + THE INSTITUTION'S PERSPECTIVE

CATHELIJNE

That tension between inside and outside, between preservation and change, is something R enske Ek knows unlike anyone else. As curator of the gardens and the internal curator of this project, she stands right at that intersection. I asked her what it means for Paleis Het Loo to open its doors to artists who ask critical questions about its own history.

RENSKE EK

"I think we owe it to society in general to try to show the history which we are very evidently part of. Also show it in the light of modern-day societal issues. Although we are a museum completely dedicated to the history of the House of Orange Nassau, it doesn't mean that we don't need to be critical about that history and the role they played during former times."

RENSKE EK

"Our garden is reconstructed as a strictly symmetrical 17th century baroque garden. It really shows how people wanted to tame nature. Nature was only good nature if it was tamed and completely ordained and straight. Everything else was the wilderness. This garden was also an outdoor exhibition room where they really flaunted their wealth. One bulb of each flower could already represent an enormous amount of money. It was really a statement of wealth and position."

5  CONCLUSION

CATHELIJNE

And that is exactly what State of Wonder puts under the microscope. The history of this place, honestly and openly. Anna Bitkina has a clear ambition for what this project can mean for the future of Paleis Het Loo.

ANNA BITKINA

"I truly really want Palais Het Loo to become a place where new knowledge emerges, where important social problems are discussed, but also where very high quality contemporary art is presented. I really believe in the potential of this collection."

CATHELIJNE

And that ambition is shared from within the institution. Renske Ek hopes the project does something closer to home as well.

RENSKE EK

"The artists discovered so many different hidden layers of meaning for a lot of things we have here. I hope that this exhibition can also help to open their eyes to these hidden meanings."

6  SIGN-OFF

CATHELIJNE

Anna described the experience of visiting State of Wonder in a way that has stayed with me.

ANNA BITKINA

"Everyone who visits Paleis Het Loo will start to automatically wander. But the exhibition is also inviting you to wander through different artworks and ideas, through different historical periods and sensory experiences. It's really an expedition."

CATHELIJNE

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself be filled with wonder, and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.

1  OPENING

“What is lost when a plant loses its name?”

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

When you look at the work ‘Searching for Lost Seeds’ by Gayatri Kodikal, you see an artist investigating what disappears when knowledge is not passed on.

3  CONTEXT & THEME

Kodikal investigates what lies hidden in the collection of Paleis Het Loo, and what has disappeared. Seeds, crops, herbs that were once brought from the colonies. Sometimes as curiosities, sometimes as commodities. Rarely with respect for the knowledge attached to them.

The concept of wildness is itself a construction. What we call wild nature was, for others, a home, a garden, a pharmacy. The question Kodikal asks: whose gaze determined what was seen as wild, and what as civilised?

4  GUIDING QUESTIONS ARTIST

• What drew you to the collection of Het Loo? Which objects or stories affected you most?

• What exactly do you mean by lost seeds, is that literal, or also metaphorical?

• How do you personally see the tension between Western botanical knowledge and indigenous knowledge?

• What do you hope visitors see or feel when they stand before this work?

5  CONCLUSION

And so we return to that first question: what is lost when a plant loses its name? Not just the plant. But an entire system of knowledge, of care, of meaning. Perhaps you look at the garden around you a little differently now.

6  SIGN-OFF

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself be filled with wonder, and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.

1  OPENING

“Are you actually welcome here?”

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

When you look at home/host by Edward Clydesdale Thomson, you see a work that probes the boundaries between host and guest, between belonging and foreignness.

3  CONTEXT & THEME

Clydesdale Thomson investigates the concept of hospitality, but also its opposite. Who is welcomed within the walls of this palace? Which animals, which people, which ideas were admitted, and which were kept out?

Paleis Het Loo was once a carefully delineated royal domain. But nature does not respect borders. Animals move freely, plants colonise walls, birds nest wherever they choose. Clydesdale Thomson reveals how thin the line between host and intruder actually is.

4  GUIDING QUESTIONS ARTIST

• How did you come to think about hospitality as a theme, through your own background or experiences?

• Which non-human inhabitants of Het Loo affected you most?

• Was there a moment during your time here that changed how you saw this palace?

• How does hostility relate to hospitality in your work?

5  CONCLUSION

Are you welcome here? That question has no simple answer. Because hospitality is always about power, about who sets the rules and for whom they apply. Clydesdale Thomson invites you to consider: who or what do you actually call a guest?

6  SIGN-OFF

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself be filled with wonder, and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.

1  OPENING

CATHELIJNE

The poet and author M. NourbeSe Philip once asked: what is the word for bringing bodies back from water? From a liquid grave?

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

CATHELIJNE

As you look at the work of Caitlin Berrigan, you are standing in the entrance hall of the palace. White marble beneath your feet, large shells on pedestals around you. And throughout that space: the sound of breath. Human breath, moving through the deep sea.

3  CONTEXT & THEME

CATHELIJNE

Look down. That marble is not just stone. It is built from the bodies of billions of microscopic sea creatures called coccolithophores, which convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into calcium carbonate rock. They sank to the ocean floor, were compressed by the Earth's mantle, and rose back up as marble mountains. This palace is literally built from the sea.

The sea runs deeper here than marble. Much of the wealth of the House of Orange-Nassau was built through the Dutch East and West India Companies  and maritime commerce such as indigo and the transatlantic slave trade. Ships sailed these routes for profit. One of them, the Witte Leeuw, sank in 1613 near the island of St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Its inventory listed 1,311 diamonds. They were never found.

I spoke with Caitlin about how she pulls all of this into a single work.

4  CAITLIN BERRIGAN

CAITLIN BERRIGAN

“Those carbon forms, those carbon gems that have been taken by the sea are also a kind of metaphor for all of the ancestral Africans who were lost by throwing themselves into the water to escape or by being thrown overboard during the transatlantic slave trade. Their bodies that rest on the sea floor have become also part of the carbon cycle. They are also spiritual diamonds.”

CAITLIN BERRIGAN

“The shells from the shipwreck feature the breathing exercises of a swim school called the Oshun Swim School, which is led by and for BIPOC swimmers. Because the water is a huge site of trauma, whether it is from the middle passage itself or the many decades of segregation that kept Black people out of the water and disconnected from nature as a site of healing.”

5  CONCLUSION CATHELIJNE

CATHELIJNE

Back to the opening question: what is the word for bringing bodies back from water? The writer M. NourbeSe Philip asked that in her poem Zong!, about a slave ship that threw hundreds of Africans overboard in 1781. There is no word. Berrigan's answer is not a word either. It is a practice, and a demand. The Oshun Swim School teaches people whose ancestors were kidnapped and enslaved by European imperialists to return to the water on their own terms. Not as a grave. As a place of healing.

But Berrigan holds both things at once: resilience and a call for reparations. Not just symbolic repair. Material reparations, political justice. The 1,311 diamonds were never found. And the accounting is not finished..

6  SIGN-OFF

CATHELIJNE

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself wander , and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.

1  OPENING

“Can you smell something that has long since disappeared?”

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

As you look at the work of Marianna Maruyama, you might smell something. Take a moment. Because this work is not made of paint or stone, but of scent.

3  CONTEXT & THEME

For this project, Maruyama created two perfumes: Diana, named after the goddess of the hunt, and Common Origin. Two scents, two stories.

I spoke with Marianna to understand why she chose scent as the medium for this work

Quote Marianna:

Diana is a really interesting goddess figure. She holds a lot of contradictions. She's both a hunter and a protector of animals. And I think this kind of contradiction is sometimes missing in the artwork and in the way she's represented.

Cathelijne:

Hunting was an aristocratic privilege here for centuries. The forests of Het Loo were royal domain. But the hunt has another side too: the predator, the prey, the death. And the scent that evokes all of that. Maruyama's work asks you to move beyond the visual. What memories do scents evoke, and whose memories are they, really?

5  CONCLUSION 

Can you smell something that has long since disappeared?

Quote Marianna:
“I wanted it to be something that is hard to capture, that it cannot be digitally registered. And scent is a really wonderful medium in that way, because it escapes capture. And Diana is the perfect example of a figure who escapes capture."

Maruyama's answer is: yes. Scent is the most direct memory we have, it goes straight to feeling, bypassing thought. And perhaps the scent of this work says more about power and possession than any painting could.

6  SIGN-OFF

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself be filled with wonder, and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.

1  OPENING

“What if climate change isn't something you see on a screen, but something that starts beneath your feet?”

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

As you look at the work of Antye Guenther, you are looking at something nature already started. Guenther has simply made it visible.

3  CONTEXT & THEME

In the historic cellars of Het Loo, tiles have been damaged by salt, a sign of rising damp, of a changing climate. A quiet but unmistakable language that the earth writes in stone.

I spoke with Antye about what struck her when she first walked into this cellar."

Quote Antye: This little cellar that was meant to be a refuge for royals becomes a site for global climate change to push, literally push, the tiles from the walls.

Guenther works with what has already begun. Not as a dramatic catastrophe, but as a creeping process. The damage to these tiles is not an accident, it is a message. The question is whether we want to read it.

Quote Guenther: "The conservators always try to push back the evidence of global climate impact in this space, while there's so much force outside that pushes it back in."

Quote Guenther: "I actually hope that Mother Nature will win this fight. It's a futile desire from the side of humans to try to restore the space, specifically because we put so much less effort into preserving the climate."

5  CONCLUSION

What does climate change look like when you can touch it? Guenther's answer: like this. Not as a statistic or a headline, but as a tile slowly crumbling. The big story is always in the small details. Perhaps you will now also see things outside that you previously overlooked.

6  SIGN-OFF

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself be filled with wonder, and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.

1  OPENING

“Stand still for a moment. Not figuratively, but literally.”

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

As you encounter the work of Jan Christian Schulz, there is really only one thing to do: listen. Not to me, but to what was already there before I started speaking.

3  CONTEXT & THEME

Schulz recorded the sounds of Paleis Het Loo: birds, insects, wind through trees, water. What he calls the biophony of this place, the collective voice of the life that lives here.

I asked Jan Christian what he actually hears when he walks around here, and what he wants us to hear.

Quote Jan Christian:

The Grotto at Paleis Het Loo was historically designed as a place of retreat, contemplation, and sensory experience. This grotto also housed live birds. My project reactivates the grotto: shifting from contained and controlled life, caged birds, to a free remote presence, inviting the sounds of rain and birds from the outside without captivating them inside.

Cathelijne:

That voice stands in contrast to the historical ordering of this landscape. The gardens of Het Loo were designed around control: straight lines, mirrored beds, trees pruned into obedience. Schulz asks: how does nature sound when left to its own devices?

Quote Jan Christian:

Het Loo has a very strong history of controlling the hydraulic environment on their premises. This rain microphone is a form of letting go of control, and only being able to listen to it when the rain decides to fall.

Quote Jan Christian:

I would like to invite the visitors to enter the space of Grotto and take a moment to receive whatever they hear without judgment. Welcome the sounds of the birds, welcome the sounds of the rain. Maybe even welcoming the sound of an airplane if there might be one flying over.

5  CONCLUSION

What do you hear when you truly listen? Schulz discovered: much more than you would think. Nature here is speaking, but only if you are willing to be quiet. Perhaps that is also what this palace needs: people who stop looking and start listening.

6  SIGN-OFF

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself be filled with wonder, and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.

1  OPENING

“Have you come across a coat hanger made from an elephant's trunk yet?”

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

As you look at the work of Terike Haapoja, you are looking at objects that once stood for something very different: for ownership, for power, for the belief that the world belongs to humans.

3  CONTEXT & THEME

Haapoja gives voice in her work to the non-human inhabitants of this palace. Animals, plants, living beings who witnessed centuries of history, but were never given a chance to speak.

I spoke with Terike about what she encountered in the collection of Het Loo, and what moved her most.

Quote Haapoja: "There were elephant trunk coat hangers and elephant foot trash bins. To show how the commodification of non-humans and the development of modern science happened side by side."

Cathelijne:

The title, Foreign Beasts and Other Rarities, refers to the curiosity cabinets and menageries that noble families like the House of Orange assembled. Exotic animals as status objects, as proof of global power. Haapoja reverses the gaze: it is not the human looking at the animal, but the animal reflecting on the human.

Quote Haapoja: "What's striking is the amount of hunting trophies, not only from the local terrain, but from different parts of the world. There's a sense that something is happening behind the scenes, a very particular relationship with the non-human world."

Quote Haapoja: "These are not just histories, they are also present. The roots of industrial animal agriculture, the roots of the sixth mass extinction. There has to be another way of relating to each other and to the more than human world."

5  CONCLUSION

What would this palace see, if it could look back? Haapoja challenges us to imagine that we are not the centre of this story. That there have been other eyes here, and other experiences. Perhaps that thought changes something in how you walk around this place.

6  SIGN-OFF

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself be filled with wonder, and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.

1  OPENING

“Who sits at the table, and who stands behind it?”

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

As you look at the work of Bryony Dunne, you are looking at a table. But it has never been just a table.

3  CONTEXT & THEME

Dunne investigates how power is made visible through display, and more specifically: the table as a stage. 

Rich hunters served animals to show off their efforts, while  ordinary people worked hard to make what others consumed. 

The sugar trade had terrible consequences for millions of peoples. 

I spoke with Bryony  about the table as a symbol of power.

Quote Bryony:

When the king and the queen and their guests would eat at the dining table, there were people that were allowed to come and watch them eating. So it does have this element of theatre, display, power.

Quote Bryony:
What is the whole apparatus that makes that dining table happen? Who, what is the entire infrastructure behind it?

Cathelijne:

Tables of Power is not criticism from outside, but a close look at the objects we normally admire. Dunne reveals what lies beneath the tablecloth.

5  CONCLUSION

Who sits at the table, and who stands behind it? Dunne shows that this question is never separate from power. Every table has a hierarchy. And perhaps the most honest question we can ask is: what is on our own table, and where does it come from?

Quote Bryony:

Sugar is used as a preservative as well. And I think that's quite interesting when we think about the function of a museum. What's conserved, what's preserved, what materials are used to preserve the pieces.

Cathelijne:

Dunne sees the museum as a table of its own. The only question is what is on it, and what remains in the kitchen.

6  SIGN-OFF

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself be filled with wonder, and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.

1  OPENING

“Are you walking along the central path, straight towards the palace? Then you can already feel it."”

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

As you look at the work of Clemens Driessen and Teodora Cecilia Buccilli, you are already standing inside it. The garden around you is part of the question they are asking. Clemens is a researcher, Teodora an artist. This is not a work of art in the traditional sense. It is an experiment.

3  CONTEXT & THEME

Driessen and Buccilli investigate how the formal garden of Het Loo and the development of perspective in European art emerged simultaneously, and how the two became entangled. Both are instruments of a gaze that orders, controls and establishes a single centre.

I spoke with Clemens and Teodora about the question at the heart of this work: from which standpoint do we actually look at this palace?

Quote Driessen: “When you walk towards the palace on this straight axis, you feel the entire landscape has been shaped to fit the palace, which is impressive, but at some point it can also feel a bit like a cage. A golden cage, perhaps.”

The ruling gaze, the idea that one point in space can survey everything, is not only an aesthetic principle. It is also a political one. This work asks: from which standpoint do we view the world, and who actually decided on that standpoint?

Quote Driessen: "All the stories start and end with the royal figures. That is the only viewpoint we have of this palace."

Quote Driessen: "You start to realize how perspective works in relationships between people, and by extension the way we relate not just to other people, but to other beings, animals, plants, ecologies."

5  CONCLUSION

Who decided what you would see, and how? Driessen and Buccilli show that the way we look at a garden or a painting is never neutral. There is always a perspective embedded, literally and figuratively. The question is: are you standing at the point from which you were invited to look, or are you choosing your own vantage point?

6  SIGN-OFF

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself be filled with wonder, and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.

1  OPENING

“Who does this actually belong to?”

2  INTRODUCTION CATHELIJNE

As you look at the work of Rob Voerman, you step into a space that has little in common with the rest of this palace. That is entirely intentional.

3  CONTEXT & THEME

Voerman investigates the inequality in access to land, to housing, to nature, and how that inequality continually reproduces itself. In different forms, but with the same structure.

I spoke with Rob to understand what drove him to make this particular work here, in this palace.

Quote Rob:

“Queen Wilhelmina was extremely fascinated by nature. But she was also in a very awkward position, because she probably had the largest ecological footprint in Holland in her time. In this duality, this schizophrenic constellation, I find it interesting."

Cathelijne:

This palace stands on land that was once a royal domain. Voerman constructs architecture of exclusion. His work gives form to structures we would rather not see, but which surround us everywhere.

Quote Rob:
"I was 16 when I wrote a letter to the United Nations Secretary General and asked him if they could do more about preserving the rainforest. And I got a letter back saying: don't worry, kid. We're on top of it."

 "As a child I had my room full of plants and I was breeding plants. And as I was aware that a lot of nature was being destroyed, it's kind of referring to that. A little tiny garden where I could have a whole ecosystem. A lot of people could relate to that, actually."

"You step into a world which is very opposite of the whole context of the palace. A bit alienating. And I'm curious how people would experience this contradiction.

5  CONCLUSION

Who does this actually belong to? Voerman shows that this question has no simple answer, and that in itself is telling. Ownership is never self-evident. It is always the result of a decision, and of exclusion. You carry that thought with you as you walk away from here.

6  SIGN-OFF

There is much more to discover on the grounds. Go exploring, let yourself be filled with wonder, and I am sure we will run into each other again somewhere.