Little Hampi
I am full of gratitude to be invited back to Boom Land to work with this beautiful team of Humans.
This is a gab year for the Boom Festival 
but the venue still got busy for a much smaller event named Being Gathering . Our main Instalation we worked on is for next years Boom but we planed it the way it would by in a nice shape in the middle of its progress to look welcoming for this years event.
Of course I was very curious what happen to the Karesansui 
(枯山水 / dry zen garden) we build last year.
I heard that it is still standing which was hard to believe. We build 3 arches and a heart for last years Boom Festival, the heart fell on the last day of the event and to my surprise the big of the 3 arches is still standing a year later. A special delight was how Nature grew into the art piece...
First mission is to feel the land, find a good place to work and most important get a final idea what our installation actually would by.
The venue is big and full of beauty, before I tell you more about our work I'll share some impressions ...
For the next 6 weeks we where busy working on a new Rock Garden in a corner of the Boom Land we named "Little Hampi". Our first task was get materials to start building. During the first days we had "Ruby" to assist us on this mission. We loaded her about 12 times full of rocks which we gathered all around the Land. One needs to be very careful here since scorpions aren't a rare sight, but at the end we only came across 3 of them. Ants and spiders where a much more common sight. I refused to take a couple of great rocks because there where simply to massive ant colonies underneath and I wasn't feeling okay to robe their roof.
After a few days we had a fair amount of rocks together, we estimate about 12-18 ton's. Obviously we have picked the spot we work before we drooped the rocks. It is a great place which I have in my memory from last year, I told a friend that this would by a awesome spot, but it was totally my friend Calvin who pointed it out this year. Actually I was a bit worried about its size, I knew if we are going to work here its going to huge. Calvin convince me to actually go for it, thanks Brother 
During this time I was still on it to shape the outcome in my head. This little sketch was some of the first manifestations of what will be...
Now we had a bit more than two weeks to build the base and make it look need for the visitors of the Beeing Gathering.
For me the biggest challenge was to build the base so strong that it will last for a long time. How well we did future will tell. I think its great to be able to work with this big gab, giving the wall and its filling plenty of time to settle before we continue our work.
I will let you curious about the next step till next year, best you come to Portugal next summer to see it yourself...
Almost there...
We decided to fill in Sand again like we did last year around the old installation. I think its a great material as it opens up so many possibilities of further designing as you can see later...
During the past weeks we fetched a few awesome rocks aside to create the biggest balance I have ever done. Now it was time to see what we can achieve with them. The first try we did as a two man team, it tuck us 40 minutes and we wasted a lot of energy, but we did it! The rocks we used for that sculpture are so heavy its possible but arduous to lift one alone, but since on person needs to hold the already placed rocks in place there was no choice.
This balance didn't last for long since I water the rock garden for cleaning purpose and at least one of the rocks, a slate got immediately very slippery and lost its grip.
We decided to ask for support to try it again, with even one more it was so much easier that we reduced the act to a few minutes. Nevertheless the balances we created collapsed a few more times and since the event came closer I started to worry about the consequences if especially a kid runs into our installation and in worse case also would like to climbs the sculpture. I estimate the wight of all the rocks we used for that balance over 200kg, we finally got them placed very stable but still if someone really push it it would most likely crumble.
At the end we removed two big rocks and let a small much more stable sculpture stand during the festival. This wasn't so exiting for the eye, but it's safety first. Already after the first day I knew it was the right decision when following some small foot prints trough our installation all the way to where we had this heaviest balance I created, of course with the support of Calvin, Nuno and Siddh ... thank you guys!
The lovely mossy rocks got special care to be placed in exposed part of our work to give it a nice finish. Since we expect people would use a wall to sit on and we rather not wish to see that on many corners of the installation we integrated a bench to chill and chat. We where inspired by a couple of big rocks which had a perfect flat side
To be continued...
