De Gatendragers

Esmee Geerken received a grant for writing a novel about drifting in the dark and learning to carry one’s holes. De Gatendragers tells the story of Emerald, a young earth scientist with four loose pieces of heart, who one day sits down beneath a Dutch elm in the park across from her new home. From that moment on, a journey through time begins, travelling through archives: the tree rings of the Dutch elm, the layers of the Earth’s crust, and the observations of the Universe. All wonder how things came to be, and whether they will go wrong again. Why did Raaf leave? What if the flow of milk comes to a halt? Perhaps it is possible to reverse the direction of time and return to the rooms that were left behind.

Esmee is a Dutch artist and earth scientist with a hybrid practice inspired by, among other things, the shells of foraminifera, (sea)floor sediments, biomineralisation, architecture, and philosophy. Her artistic projects explore how organisms, such as humans, form their shells within an environment. Esmee is particularly interested in the boundary zones between life and non-life, order and chaos, and in the interactions that occur in acts of construction: creating an interior within an exterior, and balancing the permeability of our enclosures, from mind to skyscraper, from language to CO₂. In her projects, she collaborates with scientists, artists, designers, and architects, as well as with the materials and creatures she encounters as an earth scientist — such as seagulls, Saharan dust, foraminifera, and ocean currents.