TWO LOCATIONS:
Federal Courthouse @ 5th and Nueces near Republic Square Park

Hilton @ 500 E 4th St. on the Southeast corner

Tree, Simon Heijdens
10th Anniversary at SXSW, Austin Texas
March 7-16 2014

Ripples on a puddle of water, footsteps in the sand and slowly gathering grime. Natural processes are existent though becoming rare in our increasingly planned surrounding. While the trees on the streets are no longer nature but carefully controlled and managed, the wind that is moving its branches still is. A light installation that traces and amplifies the leftovers of nature in the urban surrounding.

White silhouettes of trees are projected 30-40' high onto the façades of several buildings in a city. Its branches and leaves moving either slightly or intense; directly depending on the measured wind that passes the façade of the building on which it is projected. Starting full of leaves at dawn, the tree looses one of its leaves each time someone passes. When the leaf breaks of its branch, it drops down on the ground nearby. Because the leaves are made of light, they increasingly illuminate the area as they grow in amount over the course of the evening.

In celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Heijdens' pivotal work Tree, an installation of the work in its original setting of 3 Trees throughout the city of Austin during the SXSW festival. After London, New York, Moscow, Tokyo, Berlin, Hong Kong, Milan, Beijing, Rotterdam, Milan, Hasselt, Eindhoven, Cologne, Nottingham and Amsterdam, Austin will mark the 22nd installation of Tree in the past decade.

Commissioned by SXSW with the kind support of Dutch Culture USA and the Downtown Austin Alliance.
www.simonheijdens.com/tree