Moeraspaleis — Deep Time Agency
Deep Time Agency’s proposal focuses on the area around the former town hall in Tegelen. When construction of the building began, there was a great deal of discussion about the choice of location. The ground was said to be too marshy and unsuitable for such a stately building. The town hall was therefore jokingly referred to as the ‘Swamp Palace’.
Deep Time Agency takes this history as a starting point for thinking about the ecological future of the city. The plan is to transform the town hall into a swamp palace. In this way, the historical and future ways in which Tegelen’s landscape can be shaped and changed become open for discussion.
Imaginary primeval forest
For Moeraspaleis, Deep Time Agency takes inspiration from the imaginary primeval forest of Tegelen, as reconstructed a hundred years ago by the renowned palaeoanthropologist Eugène Dubois (1858–1940) on the De Bedelaar estate near Haelen. At the beginning of the last century, Dubois created an exotic waterscape on his estate, based on the discovery of fossil seeds that were millions of years old and had been found in the former clay pits of Tegelen.
Following Dubois’s example, they are carrying out a similar experiment, this time in the centre of Tegelen. The idea behind this is that the imagination needed to picture a growing primeval forest in Tegelen can challenge the short-term thinking that lies at the heart of today’s climate problems.
A green and biodiverse Tegelen
The work consists of three parts: an intervention during the Nieuwe Uitzichten programme in the form of a market stall, a virtual AR (Augmented Reality) layer of Tegelen’s primeval forest, and a physical intervention around the town hall in the form of a sculpture/planter.
At the market stall, Deep Time Agency plans to give seeds to passers-by, inspired by Dubois’s fossil discoveries from the last century. The virtual layer shows the plants and trees that could grow from these seeds over time, transforming the town hall into a wild ‘swamp palace’. Using an app, visitors can step into this imaginary primeval forest and, when they return to the market stall, adopt a bag of Dubois seed mix for their own garden.
In a sculpture that also functions as a planter, plants from Dubois’s collection grow in a wild mix. It forms a concentrated version of Dubois’s ecological experiment at the De Bedelaar estate. The sculpture is made of bricks engraved with the names of the fossil seeds rising from the planter. Through this intervention, the project explores the idea of a green and biodiverse Tegelen – something that is missing from this present-day urban area, a clear product of the twentieth century.
