-
Location:Dijlepark, Schapenstraat 40 paviljoen
-
Accessibility:This location is wheelchair accessible.
Hundreds of dried beech leaves rustle like a barely audible carpet of sound in one of Leuven’s most idyllic spots.
Rudy Decelière is interested in barely perceptible sounds and draws inspiration from nature and the silence of the Swiss mountains. For Shallow Water, for instance, he collected hundreds of dried beech leaves, which he arranged on a circular wooden surface; via a system of magnets and copper wires, short impulses set the leaves in motion, as if water drops were falling on them. The microscopic rustling creates an extremely soft carpeted sound that invites you to pause and listen closely. For the artist, this assemblage of leaves is also a metaphor for how organisms (attempt to) live together on our planet.
Today, the Dijlepark is a charming piece of public greenery hidden between two arms of the Dijle. In the second half of the eighteenth century, there was already a garden on this spot, as that is when the octagonal garden pavilion was built. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the garden belonged to House Bethlehem, the stately mansion located next to the park entrance on Schapenstraat. Since 2003, that house has been owned by KU Leuven and houses the university’s Research Coordination Office and the KU Leuven Association. From the 1930s until the splitting of the university and the departure of the Francophones from Leuven, the property was used as a pedagogy for female students. It was then owned by the Sisters of Bethlehem from Nivelles, who kept strict watch over the doings of the female residents there. In the 1970s, when it belonged to the insurance company of the Belgian Farmers’ Union, a large part of the garden was turned into a car park. What remained of the garden has been a publicly accessible park since 1994.
Text: Liesbet Nys (KU Leuven)
