Luna Konings

In the stillness of the night, deep within Dutch national park De Veluwe, a wildlife camera captures an unexpected signal. A wolf appears, pausing as if it senses another presence. It is Pan, the ancient god of shepherds and the wild, who has come to speak with the wolf. A hybrid of man and goat, Pan bridges the human and non-human worlds and embodies the spirit of wilderness. What follows is a nocturnal conversation between two exiled figures: one banished from the land, the other from our imagination. In the installation A Wild Encounter, I reflect on the recent reappearance of the wolf in the Netherlands through venturing on a fictional conversation between the Wolf and Pan. The work consists of archival footage of wolves captured by wildlife cameras in De Veluwe, an animation of Pan, a scripted dialogue, and a bundle of essays reflecting on the wolf, the wild, and the role of mythmaking and animation. Through this project, I seek to move beyond the human-centred and polarised discourse surrounding the wolf's return. Instead, I approach it through the lens of the fictional and the more-than-human, using storytelling to reframe how we relate to the animal, the landscape, and the idea of wilderness.

The book Wild Imaginations accompanies the work A Wild Encounter and is a bundle of essays reflecting on the wolf, the wild, and the role of mythmaking and animation.

(In the picture: the installation at Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen) In the stillness of the night, deep within Dutch national park De Veluwe, a wildlife camera captures an unexpected signal. A wolf appears, pausing as if it senses another presence. It is Pan, the ancient god of shepherds and the wild, who has come to speak with the wolf. A hybrid of man and goat, Pan bridges the human and non-human worlds and embodies the spirit of wilderness. What follows is a nocturnal conversation between two exiled figures: one banished from the land, the other from our imagination. In the installation A Wild Encounter, I reflect on the recent reappearance of the wolf in the Netherlands through venturing on a fictional conversation between the Wolf and Pan. The work consists of archival footage of wolves captured by wildlife cameras in De Veluwe, an animation of Pan, a scripted dialogue, and a bundle of essays reflecting on the wolf, the wild, and the role of mythmaking and animation. Through this project, I seek to move beyond the human-centred and polarised discourse surrounding the wolf's return. Instead, I approach it through the lens of the fictional and the more-than-human, using storytelling to reframe how we relate to the animal, the landscape, and the idea of wilderness.

Personal exploration of frames

Personal exploration of frames

The word human is derived from the word humus, meaning earth. This awakens the notion that we originate from the "underland", the place below the earth’s surface. Although humans are closely connected to this subterranean space, it remains quite unknown and mysterious to us. It is a place that is both literally and figuratively hard to access. Caves then, are like naturally formed cracks in the earth’s surface, that provide an entry point for humans into this "underland". With their own visual language of shapes that have formed over millions of years, they are spaces where the imagination can run freely and mysteries seem closer than in the world above ground. The work 'spelunking' explores these visual and conceptual aspects of the cave.

A series of "sound-maps" in which I listen to my surroundings and visualize these into drawings.

Personal exploration of frames

Personal exploration of frames

Hand-made quilted blanket with heatpressed images, both of my own drawings and of illustrations from the feminist magazines Ain’t I a Woman?.

Digital symbols leave no physical remains and thus might be lost as the earth, and societies with it, change over time. But what if they’d become fossilized and uncovered in a future archaeological dig-site? The installation DigiGlyphs builds upon the concept of technofossils; the material remnants of modern societies that will be visible in earth’s geological layers in the deep future. Almost all cultural objects made were once grown or derived from the resources beneath our feet. In this installation, even the most abstract digital symbols, that are seemingly immaterial, find their way back to their physical origins. For future archaeologists, DigiGlyphs will be the reliefs of our current time, raising questions about how we roamed the (digital) world.

Wood-carved object with engravings connected to a fictional short story I wrote in which an archealogist reflects on the object named a Sun-Disc. She realizes that the object has been misinterepreted for years. What her colleagues thought to be an ancient weapon, appears to be an object related to and keeping track of communities. The story was inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.

Publication design containing the chapter But I Love my Family! from the essay Abolish the Family by Sophie Lewis. All the images used were found in the feminist magazine Ain’t I a Woman? from the 80s.

Autonomous work

Digital symbols leave no physical remains and thus might be lost as the earth, and societies with it, change over time. But what if they’d become fossilized and uncovered in a future archaeological dig-site? The installation DigiGlyphs builds upon the concept of technofossils; the material remnants of modern societies that will be visible in earth’s geological layers in the deep future. Almost all cultural objects made were once grown or derived from the resources beneath our feet. In this installation, even the most abstract digital symbols, that are seemingly immaterial, find their way back to their physical origins. For future archaeologists, DigiGlyphs will be the reliefs of our current time, raising questions about how we roamed the (digital) world.

The Wood Wide Web and the World Wide Web could be seen as opposites from each other; one naturally growing and the other manufactured by humans. But when it comes down to it, their structure and operation actually have great similarities. What if the Wood Wide Web’s mycelial roots, actively looking for new symbiotic partners, stumble upon the electronic cables that connect the World Wide Web far beneath the ground? What would they say to each other? Would they like each other? And what if they’d fall in love? In “WWW❦WWW” I visualized the potential relationship between natural and artificial underground roots. With interaction and exchange between the visitor and the work, I imagined new symbiotic connections. Exhibited in The Grey Space. Photo by Helena Roig.