Ellen Schroven is currently working on Berg: a landscape expedition, indebted to ‘Pataphysics and anchored in nine Belgian and Dutch villages and hamlets bearing the name ‘Berg’.
Observing, writing, dreaming, drawing, and filming, she explores the various mountain environments. She investigates whether the speed at which clouds glide past in the morning influences the course of the rest of the day, compiles color maps of geological formations in sunken lanes, captures the sounds with which the wind drives light through the fluttering elms, chases dragonflies and variable damselflies in a fossil river valley, copies the meandering Demer line step by step until evening falls, and examines the darkness of the night in the only Berg situated in a valley.

To unravel potential escape routes and make them known to the world, the help of a Reed Blower, a Pianist, and a Writer is enlisted. The project focuses on connection – between people, between landscapes, and between nine villages that, at first glance, have nothing in common other than their names. By thinking back and forth across disciplinary boundaries while creating, walking, speaking, remaining silent, and playing, the aim is to create a kaleidoscopic image that does justice to the fragility, intensity, and layering of the natural environment of which we are (no more than) a part.

Berg started with a single word and fanned out into a collective trajectory. Through retrospective crossroads and a sailing trip that began in the 1930s, the expedition gradually became a study of the duration between different points in time.