We Have Never Been Modern

Some five hundred meters in the Wadden Sea, Lotte and Daan installed a glass cube. When the tide is low, the cube rests on the sand. When the water comes up, the cube disappears in the sea. You can sit in the cube and watch the movement of ebb and flow for twelve long hours. A few days before the festival begins the freshly installed cube turns out to be leaking. ‘This is the end’, says Lotte on her blog. ‘Stay calm, don’t panic’, says Daan. This is Latour’s modernity at work. It will never work. There will always be a leak between nature and culture. Impossible to separate the one from the other. That is the reality we have to deal with. Every end stands for a new beginning. We have never been modern, we have always been in between. Hybrids is what we have always been. How to deal with this new reality? This leaking reality? It’s a process. It goes from acceptance to emphasizing. It starts with Daan saying ‘don’t panic’ and ends with him drilling more holes in the cube.

Uit The end (or how to deal with it) van Pieter Van Bogaert