ECHO
ECHO was born as a reaction to the landscape and the experience of inhabiting it.
It is the result of an artistic residency carried out in October 2023 in the region of North Rhine-Westphalia, for Regionale 2025 Bergisches RheinLand.
The work is located at the Agger dam, fed by the Agger, Genkel, and Rengse rivers. This civil infrastructure is 225 meters long and has a maximum height of 45 meters, of which only 10 emerge above the water surface on the reservoir side.
This natural plaza is unique due to the immense mirror of water at its base.
Formally, the piece is constructed from reflection. Echo, understood as the return of a sound wave after hitting a distant surface, can only exist if there is something to reflect off of. The proposal transfers this idea to the visual plane: the dam's retaining wall becomes the support for a work that paints the water and is completed by taking advantage of its reflective properties.
The intervention requires constant balance. The line of symmetry must remain stable for the message to be revealed, and it is on this imaginary line that the poetic tension of the work is concentrated. The installation reacts to fluctuations in the reservoir's water level: it disappears when the water rises and is interrupted when it falls. It is a living, changing piece, visible or unintelligible depending on the intensity of the rain; a witness to the times we live in, a live visualization of our relationship with the environment
ECHO functions both as an image and as a question. It reflects our actions back to us and invites us to consider the echo we produce in the world we inhabit. The landscape we take for granted in our daily routine reappears under a renewed gaze. The work proposes to reestablish a connection: to bring us closer, with humility, to a territory that is not only our environment, but our home.
Approximately 1,300 m² intervention.
Project carried out within the framework of Regionale 2025 Bergisches Rheinland.
With the support of Aggerverband and Proud to Print GMBH.
