Seeds of Hope

small objects that make a gentle sound if rattled
1999 / 2002

by Sonja van Kerkhoff

small objects by sonjavank
More about the Living Creature exhibition in London, 1999, which these were made for.

These 'seeds' and have unfinished sentences on them written in response to each of six other artists work in the Living Creature installation / performance which I curated with Jessy Rahman. They were laid near each of the other artists according to a particular theme in response to that artist's work, as I interpreted it.

See more images and text about this work in the 1999 location.



More about the Oxford project in 2002.


The Subject Encounters

In 2002 I made some new seeds with new texts as artifacts which were laid on a table in Oxford shopping street.

See more images and text about this work in that location.

I laid about twelve small white balls on the table along with a sign "Pick up a seed and finish my sentence."

People picked them up, rattled them (they made a soft sound when rattled) and read them to themselves or to each other.

Each hand-made plaster 'seed' rattled and bore an incomplete sentence on issues related to world peace and cultural diversity.

Some examples of the texts were: "We can choose responses that are"
"We should care about ourselves and our visions. My vision is"
"War is culture, not nature because"
"Take a fresh look at the 'enemy' without (the letters are illegible around a point in the form)"

These texts wound round and round the balls so you had to turn them to read, and so that the final word met the beginning or met another word in the sentence.
I did this not just to make it playful but also to suggest that any following word, like making a choice, meant choosing a particular course.




Six balls were shown in a Moroccan hair stylist shop   >>
window as part of Galerie TamTam, 2008, Leiden,
The Netherlands.

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