Human impact on nature gets bigger and bigger, not only that, but our whole thinking about nature has changed. There seems to be no nature when we do not determine what nature should be. We try to understand nature in a mathematical and scientific way. That model determines how we experience it and how we deal with it. We are now at a turning point that we realize that this model needs to change.
When we started working on Creating Wilderness, we had just returned from a trip to Canada. During that visit there had been so many forest fires (most likely due to climate change) that half of Canada had been covered in smoke for the whole summer. Nature was stifling.
We try to create our wilderness as a new harmony. We build our worlds (most of the time in our studio) by physically and digitally manipulating nature. By doing this, we encourage ourselves to think about the concept of "nature". What is nature? Is nature a self-contained entity? Or is our idea of nature an ideology? Do we create nature? And what is Wilderness? Is it a tangible place? Or is it an idea? How should we think about nature? Nature has been formatted to fit our narrow and oppressed view of the world.
We want to free the wilderness. And with that, also free ourselves. Who we are and what we like to do, it seems fixed by our culture, and our self-images. Not to know where your path will lead and to be guided by your own wonder, is the freedom we encounter when making our work.
Perhaps our images of wilderness are a new definition of “the paradise.” A wilderness that we all once originally came from. And a place where we are still longing for. A place that is not made by man and which stands for the unaffected part of reality. And perhaps therefore contains an intrinsic truth. Or at least the believe that such a thing exists.
