“Art is the lie that reveals reality.” Jeroen Brouwers - “Culture, considered as a process, means acquiring a vast deal of useless knowledge, and then forgetting it.” Albert Jay Nock - “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” Douglas Huebler - “In life and in art one has to begin each day anew.” Louis Couperus



Title: Nothing but the sea between us
2010







photos by: Sjaak Langenberg
photomontage: Rosé de Beer

Project executed at the invitation of artists-initiative Satellietgroep, The Hague.






GREAT YARMOUTH – The distance between Scheveningen and Great Yarmouth, which is only 92 nautical miles away, is the shortest distance between a Dutch and a British harbour. Between 1959 and 2006, Norfolkline maintained a cargo link. In 2006 Norfolkline moved to Vlaardingen because the harbour at Scheveningen was too small for her development schemes. During their stay as artists in residence* in Scheveningen and Great Yarmouth, Sjaak Langenberg and Rosé Beer sought out overseas links between the villages and developed plans in order to bring about new connections.
For the Time and Tide Museum in Yarmouth they developed a plan to get sunburned seaside visitors into the museum. By enticing sweltering people from the beach to be photographed in swimming costumes between the historical pieces about the working class of Yarmouth, the relationship between sea and hinterland is re-affirmed. The photographs are the starting point for a museum campaign. Another plan includes a road-movie at the seaside. By parking a car with its lights on, on a turntable at the head of a harbour, it becomes a beacon, like a light house. Whoever gets into the car becomes the spectator of a road-movie, the narrative about historical and contemporary connections between Yarmouth and Scheveningen is recounted by the “driver”.
The plan Mammoths cross the North Sea by ferry is being developed further.

More information about the research and the plans:
Swimming costumes required (Dutch only) (PDF)
Road movie at the seaside (Dutch only) (PDF)
Good luck (Dutch only) (PDF)
Seventeenth century tabloid (Dutch only) (PDF)
Scenes from a marriage (Dutch only) (PDF)
Masterplan ‘Op Scheveningen’ (Dutch only) (PDF)
He loved the sea, and it claimed him (Dutch only) (PDF)
1 Dutchman and 3,000 Englishmen (Dutch only) (PDF)
Mooi weer spelen/Grin and bear it (Dutch only) (PDF)

*The artists’ residency, ‘Badgast’, challenges artists, designers, (landscape) architects and scientists to play a role in the redevelopment of the Dutch coast and rethink our relationship with the sea.

Links
Project website

Article Great Yarmouth Mercury

© Sjaak Langenberg & Rosé de Beer