Lila Veloo (2000, Groningen) is een kunstenaar en schrijver gevestigd in Groningen. Ze werkt in installatie, publicaties en tekst, en haar praktijk onderzoekt de spanning tussen verlangen en het onbereikbare. Door middel van taal en de materialiteit ervan onderzoekt haar werk de mogelijkheden van fictie als onderzoeksinstrument – waar verhalen feit, fragment en fabulatie door elkaar laten lopen.
Haar praktijk verkent een ruimte waar materialiteit het mystieke raakt; gevormd door tastbare ontmoetingen in landschappen ontvouwt dit zich via gevonden voorwerpen en gefragmenteerde verhalen: bijvoorbeeld een prehistorisch paardenbot gevonden aan de kust, of een door water geërodeerde oesterschelp. Dergelijke voorwerpen, die sporen van diepe tijd dragen, worden narratieve instrumenten die een onderzoeksproces sturen dat zowel intuïtief als onderzoeksgericht is – en waarmee zij ecologische verstrengelingen en de relatie tussen menselijk en niet-menselijk leven onderzoekt.
Lila over haar residentie:
”During my residency at VHDG, I’ve been deepening my artistic research into fiction-writing and storytelling – specifically exploring how fiction itself can be used as a method of investigation. Through this approach, I’ve explored the geological history of the landscapes surrounding Leeuwarden, shaped largely by glacial processes and rich with marine traces.
One particular fascination of mine has been the zwerfkeien (erratic boulders, direct Dutch translation: wandering stones) scattered across the Northern Dutch landscape – these (sometimes immensely big) stones have arrived here during the Ice Age, around 200,000 years ago, carried here by glaciers from Scandinavia. As I study their physical traces, I imagine a translucent glacier stretched across the land, as the water that was once part of this massive ice sheet is now flowing through my own body.
Do stones have memory? Does water hold time? Could an invisible imprint of a stone exist within me? How do we, as human beings, relate to these once-mysterious boulders embedded in the landscape?
I’m currently working on a publication in which I’ll share both textual and material findings from my time here in Leeuwarden.”
Lees hier het interview met Lila, door Veronica Gorii
Interview with Lila
There’s something pleasing about meeting here, in the space where Lila lived and worked for a month, to talk about the end of her residency. The rocks she collected are still here, along with the books and posters she left behind.
The rocks are laid out between us on the big table in the studio kitchen, and we can’t help but touch them. Some of them look like bones. Others show their age in layers, sediment pressed into sediment, color bleeding into color. Sharp edges, smooth curves.
V: How did being here – the space, the town, the people – shape your work during the residency?
L: While I was here, I did a lot of research and I visited a lot of places where the traces of the Ice Age were still visible. Very quickly, I came across the Zwerfkeien, in English, wandering stones, which can only be found in the northern provinces of the Netherlands. So I went to a lot of places to physically look for them, but also to ask people about their relationship to these stones.
I went to Gasterland which has a lot of stuwwallen – hills formed by glaciers. That’s where I found some of the stones here. I also visited the biggest zwerfkei in the Netherlands, located here in Friesland, in a small village, Rottum.. It’s called the Uppsala Granit. These stones, they have been carried here by the glaciers from Scandinavia, and what really fascinates me is that you can see all of these traces, time that has gone over them, two or three billion years. It’s really difficult for humans to understand or conceptualize these timeframes. There’s something really magical, really mythical, that I can hold these traces in my hand. I can think about the origins of these stones without ever exactly knowing them. And I, for example, I think this thing, this circle right here, could be a fossil, but I can’t be sure.
V :What did a typical day look like during your research period?
L: I came here with the intention to produce a lot. I had the plan to make a publication, but to make a publication in three weeks is really a lot. I did write a lot about my findings, but a big part of the residency became about reflecting on myself as an artist and how I wanted to approach this project.
I also did a lot of day trips – I went to different villages.I went to the salt marsh landscape in the north and I also collected a lot of soil from this area. I went to Gaasterland. I also got a tip from someone that there was a big pile of stone somewhere found on the field so I also went there.
It was really this fluctuation between writing, processing, and actually going to the landscape physically and experiencing this landscape with my body.
V: How do you experience landscapes with your body, what does that mean?
L: A big part of my work revolves around desire. These stones are such mystical and magical things that I want to physically touch them and feel their traces with my hands… The Uppsala Granit was so huge that I could press my entire body against it. I tried to remember the shapes with my hands and learn the choreography of the stone so I can store the negative shape of the stone in my body. Then I can trace the stone anywhere in any space.
A big part of this research is also about how people treat these stones. There’s a lot of farmers that find them big obstacles and remove them. Or for example the biggest zwerfkei in the Netherlands was blown up with dynamite sticks in the 1950s because the stone was just very big. There’s a story that a sailor sold this stone also and the stone was then used for one of the dikes in Lemmer to then hold back the water. Quite a beautiful metaphor for a wandering stone.
V: Were there any unexpected elements during the residency?
L: The time spent by myself gave me the space to reflect and also work in a very different timeline that I would normally work in. It’s not necessarily about producing a lot, but rather about reflecting and thinking about… a lot of things! [laughter] so I think maybe the silence here and the time by myself really allowed me to treat this research as starting point, since I’m still working on the publication and the texts using my experience here in the landscape as food for thought, and I’m very happy that I do have the possibility to deepen that out more because I’m so invested in this project I don’t want to rush it, and I like to take a longer time.
V: Is there anything you would’ve done differently?
L: Maybe to be sweeter to myself. I tried my best, of course, to accept my own process and flow with that process, but I was also judging myself for maybe not producing as much as I expected.
V: How does that differ from the process in your own studio?
L: Before this, I was doing my bachelor’s in Fine Arts. You have deadlines where you need to show something, and that’s where you just need to make decisions quickly and projects are developed in a totally different way than if you do have a nice timeline. That’s something I really liked in this residency period, it reflected very positively to my practice. The goal is not to have an exhibition or an end product but to focus on my process as an artist.
V: What would you say to other artists who’d like to apply?
L: It was such an unexpected experience. The location in Leeuwarden brought me a lot of things I couldn’t have predicted beforehand, and that it’s really nice to approach it with an open mind. A lot of things can happen in three and a half weeks.
V: How do you see this project continuing after the residency?
L: This residency was more of a starting point than an ending one. I’m still writing and planning to create a publication that will come out in 2026, where I’ll bring together all the different elements of the research.
As the interview winds down, Lila gathers her notes and looks at the stones laid out between us. One by one, she decides they’ll come with her to Groningen. The studio will lose their weight, and the stones will continue their journey.
