GOODBYE TO CENTRAL JUTLAND
On Tuesday July 13th 2021 I walked for 12 hours straight in the landscape of Central Jutland, Denmark, 26km in total. During the hike I improvised a ritual farewell poem and left it in the landscape.
I was born and raised in Central Jutland and have lived in the Silkeborg area for large parts of my life. In January 2021 I moved to Aarhus where I have also lived for a number of years in my youth. I was shaped by Central Jutland, it lives in my body, in my memories, in my way of speaking, and in my perception of what "Denmark" is. But the well-known Danish agricultural landscape is not sustainable. It is slowly dawning on all of us that the way we have cultivated the land and the way we produce food has many negative consequences - for biodiversity, groundwater pollution, animal welfare, soil depletion, deterioration of our fertility, etc.
In a few generations, this landscape will look completely different. My grandchildren will grow up with a very different view of what the Danish landscape is, and thus what it means to be Danish. That is why I am now saying goodbye to the Central Jutland landscape - a personal farewell and a farewell on behalf of society.
My project consisted of a ritual goodbye poem with 12 verses. While walking I let impressions and memories shape what I wrote about, and once an hour I stopped and improvised a verse which was then livestreamed to Facebook. I put the verse in a plastic box which I hid somewhere in the landscape. After 12 hours I had written and hidden a poem with 12 verses which hopefully will remain in the landscape for many years to come as a reminder of the time when the Danish landscape looked COMPLETELY different.
Using the GPS coordinates anyone can now go to the Central Jutland landscape and read the 12 verses.
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