Dandelion is a video installation. The video work is shown as a projection and consists of photographic shots of dandelion plants that Eva Koch has been growing in her studio, over a three year span of time, and has had standing in front of a camera, which has been taking one picture every three minutes, following the time-lapse technique. Optimally, the video work ought to be installed inside a room where both sidewalls are covered with mirrors in such a way that an infinite perspective emerges.
In the video, which plays in a loop, the viewer follows the dandelion plant’s wondrous progression from bud to flower, through seed heads and death. One watches the plant shoot up and bloom, only to wither, eventually collapse and die. Here, the moving picture culminates in a frontline of fresh and cheerful dandelions that take over the entire image area, for a moment. A distinctively striking soundtrack that has been brought forth and shaped by, among other things, recordings of growing pine trees, accompanies the video. Taken together with the soundtrack’s leaps in scale, the picture, where the passage of time, both in the recording and in the editing, has been sped up, gives rise to an unfamiliar feeling, as if our sensory apparatus had become capable of picking up new frequencies.
Dandelion, or Taraxacum, has been used as an herbal remedy, and is a frequently employed symbol of indomitability. The sturdy and nutritious root and the many seeds flying about in the air served to render the dandelion a most unpopular weed. But because of its positive attributes, it’s slowly in the process of making a comeback. The dandelion is accordingly, in itself, an image of our day’s paradigm shift, where certain plants that have once been denounced as weeds are now being regarded as useful and inestimable aspects of nature’s cycle.
Video installation · 2026 · 7:27 min. · 4K · stereo
editing: Anja Farsig · sound: Niels Plenge · photo documentation: Torben Meyer · text: Mai Misfeldt · translation into English: Dan Marmorstein
