The wind turbine represents a powerful symbol, both of hope and a clean future and of estrangement and uncertainty. For every form of energy generation, interventions in space are necessary, and every source of energy has it own spatial footprint. A landscape is loaded with values, from individual memories to societal symbols. A topic in which the relationship between people and nature is reflected as much as the relationship between people – van Weelden, Dirk., 2017. ‘Essay: Dirk Sijmons en het nieuwe Landschap’.

This project starts with a question: what is the turbine doing there ? What kind of technology lurks behind it ? How did we as humanity come to these powerful, almost self-thinking machines? How do I relate to those white giants that stand all-powerful over the landscape ? What brings us together ?

Many people are deeply aware that economic prosperity has for centuries been synonymous with an abundant and cheap fossil energy. Can we maintain our privileged living conditions with a different energy system ? The transition is experienced as a very threatening situation.

Technology and landscape arouse emotions — at times strong ones — and sometimes incomprehension. Art and music can help to offer another vantage point than words, through which innovation can be made tangible and can be made to talk to the imagination. With the project The Turbine Plays I wish to use music and the visual arts to present our landscape in image and sound. Imagination is the basis for inspiration and new ideas and can play an important role in redefining the landscape. The different arts can turn objectivity, communication and collective relations into something sensorial, and bring citizens closer together. Music and the visual arts have a different quality. But both give a new perspective and a supplementary quality to our landscape, the place and the turbine. The different art forms always bring another perspective to collective experience.

The project The Turbine Plays is meant for everyone, for serious-minded and critical citizens wondering about wind energy, for supporters of wind energy, for individuals, families, wind cooperatives, Dutch and Belgian authorities, the various umbrella organisations of wind energy producers… I wish to involve citizens in redefining a landscape which is always in motion. The project is committed to providing a positive contribution to our society and therefore I don’t only wish to address the groups mentioned above, as children, youths and students are inescapable: they contribute to developing the landscape of the 21st century.

From 2021 on a series of public events are programmed round the wind turbine and the theme of wind harvesting (every two to three months). Intimate unfamiliar and unique experiences in our imposing landscape. The wind turbine: from machine to multi-sensorial instrument.

The title the Turbine Plays is based on The Knee Plays, a series of compositions by David Byrne composed for the opera Civil Wars by Robert Wilson. It would be a sort of theatre marathon, in which all countries in the world would take part. Eventually six different composers from six different countries composed parts of Wilson’s text. The Knee Plays is a series of twelve short intermezzos that are meant to link the main scenes and to give time for planned changes. The six parts would premiere in their land of origin, and would later be put together in one epic performance during the Summer Olympic Games of 1984, a parallel with the internationalist ideals of the Olympic movement. The premiere of the complete work was cancelled when the funding failed to materialise and deadlines were not honoured.