Zoe Clemes

Sometimes it is suddenly there, a moment in which the wind rustles gently through the grass and the light, filtered by the trees, just barely touches the ground: the simple feeling of being present without having to go anywhere. Such a quiet moment is filled with attention and awareness.

We live in a time where speed is not only a choice, but a current that pushes us forward. Our days, swallowed up by notifications, deadlines, and expectations that pile up without pause. Even when it is seemingly quiet, something keeps moving. A screen lighting up in the dark, a thought racing ahead, a schedule that has already pulled us past the present. Our society is often described as hyperactive, dominated by constant stimuli, performance, and consumption. Time must not be left unused, emptiness must be filled, and silence becomes uncomfortable. In such a world, silence seems like a flaw in the system, an interruption of productivity. And yet, or perhaps precisely for that reason, I feel a great longing for silence. Not as an escape, but as balance. Not as absence, but as a different way of being present. By silence, I do not mean merely the absence of sound. Silence is a spatial quality that invites presence, openness, and slowing down. It arises in the relationship between people and their environment, when a space does not scream but whispers, demands nothing from us but simply allows us to be present. In the world around us, I see more and more often how valuable silence actually is and how easily we have lost it. That is precisely why it feels important to give it a place again.

Driven by this desire, I have designed three places of silence at a natural burial ground in an open, heath-like landscape with sandy soil, low vegetation, and tall dune forests. Here, silence is not emptiness, but a soft surface in which grief and memory can take root.

The places of silence are scattered throughout the rolling landscape and are connected by natural sandy paths. Walking between them creates a rhythm of movement and stillness, in which you naturally slow down. Each place carries a simple and meaningful action, or conversely, the absence thereof: placing and releasing a flower at the flower spot, washing it away at the water point, and isolating oneself or praying in the chapel. In both the flower spot and the chapel, vulnerability plays an important role, visible in the use of thin paper that moves with the wind and slowly decays. This vulnerability is not forceful but gently present, inviting attention and a slowing down.

The places do not direct, but whisper. And precisely in that whispering, attention turns inward, creating a form of silence that is not empty, but filled with awareness and presence.

In this way, silence is not seen as an interruption, but as an essential part of our spatial experience. A quality that helps us to be truly present again and invites us to consciously pause, within all the hustle and bustle.