Mangrove Sunset

2023

With Rund Alarabi, Sophie Bourel, Daniel Boyd, Manthia Diawara, Rhea Dillon, Vienna Gist, Olga Hohmann, Prem Krishnamurthy, Şehnaz Layıkel Prange, Djon Mundine OAM FAHA, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Anna von Raison and Sylvie Séma Glissant

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Mangrove Sunset is a six-hour dramaturgy of sound, speech and changing light inspired by the poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant. It was commissioned as part of Daniel Boyd’s exhibition, RAINBOW SERPENT (VERSION). At 18:00 on 29 April 2023, the electric lights of the Gropius Bau were slowly turned off. Without lights, the views of the surrounding streets, buildings and sky of Berlin came into focus, inter-relating the Gropius Bau with its environment. The light coming from the skylight glowed from above. Light passing through Daniel Boyd’s windows on the first floor was speckled, like a mangrove.

 

The sun officially set at 20.39 though the gloaming lasted another hour. The light during this time was pink, yellow, orange, red and then a saturated blue as the lack of electric lights gives way to a solar dramaturgy. Because of Boyd’s mirrored floor across the atrium, these colorations were reflected both above and below. Between 21:30 and midnight, the space was illuminated only by the lights outside:, from cars and streetlights and the glow of the city. As eyes adjusted, shapes were less distinct, as in a mangrove, where the distinctions between land, water, banks, river, plant, soil, roots and trees are hard to discern, existing together in a weave.