In the Lands of Knowledge

In de Landen van Kennis

video by Sonja van Kerkhoff + Sen McGlinn, 2006

Nederlands   Turkish


Experience a compressed verison of the video, music + text.

The texts (sung and spoken) are about the impact of direct mystical experience.

Our encounters with the transcendent, glimpsed in the mirrors of diverse specifics (here: a turning tulip in the elements and accents in two languages) can transport us to another reality.


June-July 2006, in the exhibition: Between Tulip and Istanbul, DNA or Inspiration in Gallery Genootschap Kunstliefde, Utrecht.

Top to bottom: Hanging tulips: Tulips from Istanbul by Sonja, Lands of Knowledge, 5 minute DVD with voices speaking Turkish (Barbara Feinieg) and Dutch (Coskun Dogruluk) and music by Sandy Hoover (London / U.S).
On the ground: Memorials by Sen McGlinn + Sonja van Kerkhoff.

Other work shown at the same time as part of the Turks Express, cultural festival in the muziekcentrum, Vredenburg, in Utrecht. This is a shopping complex and exhibition space around the a concert hall adjacent to the central railway station.

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff

The spoken text comes from the Seven Valleys, a Sufi-like text by Baha'ullah, that in the DVD shown in the exhibition in Utrecht is spoken in Dutch by a Turkish man and in Turkish by a Dutch woman, clearly distinguishable by their accents. This work is also about the awareness of influence (part of experience in the mirrors of diverse specifics), and accents are a clear indication of this. The music is by Sandy Hoover (London /U.S.), a friend of Sonja's. It is the final part of the song "Way Out There", a song built up in various modes (or styles/influences)
In this work you only hear the final part of it.
The song itself is about (in my view) the awareness of direct experience and being "way out there" in it.

By My life, O friend, were you to taste of these fruits, from the green garden of these blossoms which grow in the lands of mystic knowledge, beside the brilliance of the lights of the Essence in the mirrors of names and attributes -- yearning would seize the reins of patience and reserve from your hand, and make your soul shake with the flashing light, and draw you from the earthly homeland to the first divine homeland in the Center of Realities, and lift you to a plane wherein you would soar in the air even as you walk upon the earth, and move over the water as you run on the land.


<< Vignettes and Interstices One of the three works by Sonja, Sen + Jacqueline in the Vredenburg Passage way
in the Music Centre next to the Utrecht Railway Station.


Lower Left Left to Right: Vignettes and Interstices, Parking Spaces For Important Visitors, Conversations
and The Letters of the Living

Lower Right Parking Spaces For Important Visitors

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff

artwork, copyrighted by Sonja van Kerkhoff



<< Detail of Conversations

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