Concept
Sandworm (installation)
Overview
Sandworm (2012) is a site-specific art installation and a fusion of environmental art and architecture by Finnish architect Marco Casagrande situated on the dunes of Wenduine beach in Belgium. The curvaceous structure is made entirely from willow.
The fifty-metre long organic structure stretches out between the dunes like an enormous wooden worm. It is part of the Beaufort Triennial of Contemporary art.
The installation is an organic shell built from willow branches woven through arches of various heights placed at a length of 45 meters and a height and width of 10 meters. It falls within a local long tradition of willow weaving normally more modest in scale. Sandworm has been created in an undulating shape upon the tidal beaches of Wenduine town. From a distance, the mounds of tree remnants suggest the form of a massive creature, emerging out of the ground. Up close, visitors can investigate the textured surface of the structure, and they are invited to interact with the sculpture by walking through the interior. The space is used for picnics, relaxation and "post industrial meditation". Building on Monet's beliefs that it is only the surrounding atmosphere that gives subjects their true value, Casagrande works in harmony with the air and light in this architectural piece.
Casagrande describes the work as "weak architecture" – a human-made structure that wishes to become part of nature through flexibility and organic presence. The visitors are describing the Sandworm as a willow cathedral finely tuned to celebrate the site specific conditions of the Wenduine tidal beaches. As one visitor, Peter Beyen, puts it: "The artist believes that architectural control goes against nature and thus also against architecture… To the Finnish artist Marco Casagrande designing is not sufficient. Design should not replace reality. The building must grow out of the location, it must react to its environment, it must be a reflection of life and also be itself, as every other living being." According to Peter Beyen, Casagrande "believes that the built human environment should be a mediator between human nature and nature itself. To be part of this, man must be weak".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Not only the actions of the body, but the whole body itself is, as we have shown above, phenomenon of the will, objectified will, concrete will. All that goes on in it must therefore proceed through will, although here this will is not guided by knowledge, but acts blindly according to causes, which in this case are called _stimuli_.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea
States what Sandworm is.
WE now come to the more immediate subject of this volume, namely, the amount of earth which is brought up by worms from beneath the surface, and is afterwards spread out more or less completely by the rain and wind. The amount can be judged of by two methods,—by the rate at which objects left on the surface are buried, and more accurately by weighing the quantity brought up within a given time. We will begin with…
Charles Darwin, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms
Close in meaning to Sandworm; the term itself is not named.
All the steps taken by man to regulate his existence, ought only to be considered as a long succession of causes and effects, which are nothing more than the development of the first impulse given him by nature. The same animal, by virtue of his organization, passes successively from the most simple to the most complicated wants; it is nevertheless the consequence of his nature. The butterfly whose beauty we admire…
Paul Henri Thiry Holbach, The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1
Close in meaning to Sandworm; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Environmental philosophy.