A Neatly Manicured Hedge is an installation consisting of a 3d tufted carpet, a knitted coat and a couple of tools such as scissors. Placed on a wooden stage with both a horizontal and vertical space and a distorted curve. The installation is supposed to be a space in a space, a world that is standing on its own inside our existing concrete world.

A Neatly Manicured Hedge started with the desire to make a all-encompassing material for a specific place. A material that holds a little bit of everything. A blend, a mixture, a melange, a tweed. The material would be something to hold time and place.

In my ambition to compose this all-encompassing material of a specific place, I decided to create that specific place first.

The world is a 3d carpet which is made with a mechanical tufting tool, the tool pushes loops of yarn trough a backing fabric. Each loop of yarn means one of my hand movements, the maker. I liked the idea of this process because it makes me feel like a true creator of my own world. I like to be the folly builder who is building a world stone after stone or tread after tread completely by hand. Building for the sake of building. Spending time is a luxury.

Part of the work is performative. During the performance I am a camouflaged creature, wearing a coat made out of the same materials as the environment. Tweed is a fabric that extracts its ingredients and colours from the land it grows on. Hunters used to wear tweed as camouflage.

Cutting the pile of the carpet, like a shepherd clipping a sheep or a gardener trimming a hedge. The carpet is made by hand. And it will also be broken down by hand. Giving each tread the attention it deserves. There is enough time. The only two things a sheep needs to grow wool are water and grass. During the performance I am the sheep whose coat is growing by spending time eating.

In the end, after a long time has passed, there will be nothing but a mountain of woolen fluff. Yet this mountain of fluff would not just be a mountain of fluff. It would be the all-encompassing material.

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