Cocky Eek

Dark Skies

10 march 2024 – Sonic Acts –The Muddy Muddy Mystery Tour Moddergat 5222.5055,N,00512.9701,E.by Cocky Eek. In a rapidly changing world, fieldwork is a crucial part of our cultural orientation. It is the practice of making sense between oneself and the landscape. In this field trip, we will visit several places along the Frisian coastline, known for their dark skies and direct exposure to the elements.
Staying with the mud, Cocky Eek will conduct a ‘quick and dirty’, low-tech workshop to create mud listening and sensing devices – a unique opportunity for an in-depth encounter with the saltmarshes of Marrum. Under the guidance of a local mud guide and equipped with our handmade devices, participants will visit the area around the villages of Moddergat and Paezens – to listen in, to, and with the tidal landscape.
10 March, Moddergat 5222.5055,N,00512.9701,E. Muddy Muddy Mystery Tour, Sonic Acts, foto credit: Carolyn Strauss

The Wadden Sea, as one of the largest tidal planes on the planet, ties together sky and mud. At night, this is the darkest area of the Netherlands, with relatively little light pollution. It is exactly in these places where one can strongly sense the rhythms of a tidal region that are governed by interplanetary cycles. Their force of influence extends also into our imagination and culture. What can the dark sky tell us if we listen to the depths of its mysteries?

Together with twelve ArtScience students we conducted improvisational research under the night skies of the salt marshes of the Wadden Sea during the darkest week of November 2023. This is not research done alone, but involves local people, local beings, as well as the darkness of the sky and the pitch black mud below our feet. As a collective we shared our experiential findings with local residents in synchronicity with the falling stars of the Leoniden swarms. What a night! And I wonder: what happens if, in our educational systems, we would tune in more with celestial rhythms?

Dark Skies public events:

Sonic Acts: Muddy Muddy Mystery Tour, 17 jan 2024, Moddergat and Marrum, Nl Sonicacts – The-Muddy-Muddy-Mystery-Tour

The Night of the Falling Star, ArtScience Interfaculty public evening, Thursday, 16th November, Het Lage Noorden,Marrum, NL. re-imagine-europe – Stars-in-their-eyes

Sonic Sources, KABK Deep Futures Group x Mushroom Radio. mushroom radio -SonicSources

Dark Skies and the Art of Dreaming, Faultlines forum: KABK Deep Futures Research Group, 31 may 2024, The Hague, NL. Deep Futures Research Group 2023-2024. brochure: brochure fault-lines-2024 video-documentation ‘Dark Skies and the Art of Dreaming’ – Cocky Eek: video presentation Cocky Eek_ Fault Lines Forum

12 November 2023, Saltmarshes, Marrum 53°19’59.2″N 5°46’38.9’E. Here we are, receiving the live radio signals from NOAA-2 passing over in a curved line above our heads from Portugal to Iceland in a duration of 10 minutes. NOAA-2 is a weather satellite, orbiting earth since 1970 and about to die. [piep -peip – piep ]. The workshop Stars in Their Eyes conducted by Sophie Dyer and Sacha Engelmann from Open Wheater was hosted by Sonic Acts 2024. Photografy Sophie Dyer.
12 November 2023, Saltmarshes, Marrum 53°19’59.2″N 5°46’38.9’E. Photografy Sophie Dyer.

12 November 2023, Saltmarshes, Marrum 53°19’59.2″N 5°46’38.9’E. Photografy: Lila de Koning
12 November 2023, Saltmarshes, Marrum 53°19’59.2″N 5°46’38.9’E. Photografy: Lila de Koning

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During the research process, my dreams seem to guide me for direction: one said: ‘only write down your direct observations!’ Others sucked me in a black hole; functioning as a portal to travel to other times and other places. 

Where are we when we dream?

I kept falling into black holes.

If I fall in a black hole how do I get out of it?

I explored this question by diving into the ideas of Stephen Hawking who first conceived of black holes, and Carlo Rovelli who has written about them, and their opposites – White Holes – more recently. It might be hard to see behind the event horizon of the black hole but in my dream I was positioned on another angle from a far distanced in space: a methodology I borrowed from his book, which I applied in my dream. I saw that white and black tunnels are swirling around each other. This theory possibly builds upon Rovelli’s insights. I wrote him a letter to share the amazing insights of my dream.

Dark Skies with special thanks to:
ArtScience students: Lola Brancovich, Lila de Coninck, Jedrzej Eltman, Raphael Diederen, Wouter van den Elzen, Inge Kengen, Inga Hirsch, Bokyoung Kim, Anaïs Lossouarn, Wiggo Mott, Charlotte Roschka, Michelle O’Higgins Theilmann. The birds, the mud, the salt marshes, the stars, the planets in particular: Jupiter, Saturn and Venus, Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann from Open-Weather, Adriana Knouf (scientist/artist), Koen van den Driesche (local astronomer), Harry Veentra (local field-guide), Sandra Jansen and Stephan Valk for
welcoming us to Het Lage Noorden, Marrum, Friesland and Sonic Acts 2024.

Dark Skies – and The Art of dreaming presented during Fault Lines: KABK Research Forum 2024
Featuring the KABK Deep Futures Research Group
Friday 31 May, 11:00-19:00, KABK Auditorium

Excerpt of fieldnotes Cocky Eek, pg 5: 22 September 2023, Westhoek 53.274044, 5.554670. A Balancing Act: The Autumn Equinox. 22 September 2023 – 7:39 in the evening  – I am on the edge of the Waddensea facing the sun setting down in the east. There is nobody here, but me and a thousand birds who are also staged in this event. Exactly 12 hours later  – 07:39  in the morning I am at the same spot, with the memory of the sunset in my back. Witnessing the sunrise in the east. For he first time i can draw and feel the exact line of sunset and sunrise; the world is in balance. I’m aligned – standing on the exact horizontal east -west-line. The world is in equilibrium. Everywhere in the world the day is as long as the night, Autumn has started.
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Excerpt of fieldnotes Cocky Eek : 12 November 2023, Marrum 53°19’59.2″N 5°46’38.9’E. Dear Saturn, I really wonder did you see us too? Your colors looked delicious: a bit like a spinned bowl of mocca, caramel and milky chocolate. And then our disk! Its -a mega crumbled ice surface.
Here in Friesland we can have ice too, when earth is tilting away from the sun our lakes can freeze like smooth mirrors, wonderful to skate on. ohh and also, It was stunning to see you in the position with your disk a little bit bent forward and angled towards the right. phoeff – imagine that you like us also rotate counterclockwise around your centre line.
Excerpt of fieldnotes Cocky Eek16 November 2023, Marrum 53°19’59.2″N 5°46’38.9’E. The cycling dance of the Jupiter/Saturn. For the third night I can see both Jupiter and Saturn in my field of vision in the northeastwest – northnorthwest direction. I try to trace the relative motions of the two planets compared to the evenings before. and start to wonder how their shifting positions relate to each other?
When the two planets Jupiter and Saturn, appear closest together in the sky one speaks about  a great conjunction. Great conjunctions occur approximately every 20 years when Jupiter “overtakes” Saturn in its orbit.
There is a rumor that great conjunction assists in the understanding of evolutionary jumps and the growth of human consciousness.
The last great conjunction happened in 21th dec 2020, did you feel the jump?

Venus – Jedrzej Eltman – ArtSience student: ‘It was cold, the wind was gently touching my cheeks… In the same position as 8 hours earlier where I saw Jupiter, was Venus… It was alone, there above all things that were closer to me. Even though I couldn’t see any movement of it, It was mostly about movement…. The sky above was getting brighter and the Venus started fading out. The day was about to begin, birds were flying to the coast to rest, sheep were waking up. There was a visible relation between the outer movement with the coming movement…’ Photography Jedrzej Eltman.