Five bon­sai trees upon a con­fe­ren­ce table reve­al their secret con­ver­sa­ti­ons eaves­drop­ped through inge­nious headphones.

Five bon­sai trees are arran­ged on a round wooden table. Their nar­row trunks are wrap­ped with cop­per wire, refer­ring to how young bon­sai are for­med in asi­an nur­se­ries. The cables hang like roots over the edge of the table and stream across the floor. This work by German sound-art pio­neer Christina Kubisch invi­tes visi­tors to lis­ten to the ​“hid­den” sounds emit­ted by the bon­sai. Through headp­ho­nes, spe­ci­al­ly desig­ned to cap­tu­re sounds through the sys­tem of elec­tro­mag­ne­tic induc­ti­on, you can hear how each bon­sai reveals their secrets. Kubisch cre­a­ted this his­to­ric work in 1988 as a cri­ti­que of the ongo­ing NATO exer­ci­ses in nor­thern Germany. Those lar­ge-sca­le exer­ci­ses at the time had a devasta­ting effect on natu­ral sur­rounds. In res­pon­se to fai­ling cli­ma­te con­fe­ren­ces, the trees are hol­ding their own round­ta­ble on the sta­te of nature.

The Hollands College, foun­ded in 1617, was inten­ded for stu­dents from Haarlem who came to stu­dy the­o­lo­gy at Leuven University with the inten­ti­on of returning to the Republic after­wards to devo­te them­sel­ves to Catholic pas­to­ral care as priests. The col­le­ge was hou­sed in a sixteenth-cen­tu­ry home of the Uten Liemingen fami­ly. In the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, archi­tect Jacques Antoine Hustin exten­si­ve­ly remo­del­led the col­le­ge. Even when it came into the hands of Cicercule Paridaens a few years after the dis­so­lu­ti­on of the Old University (1797), it again under­went a lot of archi­tec­tu­ral chan­ges. Paridaens hou­sed the Congregation of the Daughters of Mary, which she foun­ded, as well as a school for girls. In 2008, the uni­ver­si­ty bought the col­le­ge and she made this uni­que heri­ta­ge com­plex — with its beau­ti­ful cha­pel, libra­ry, refec­to­ry and win­ter gar­den — avai­la­ble, among other things, for deba­tes, con­certs and other acti­vi­ties of her think tank Metaforum.

Text: Liesbet Nys (KU Leuven)