Sandhouse-project: Stillness, Movement and Transience

A giant art project with a lifespan of 12 hours

Everything in life is ephemeral, everything comes and goes, and nothing stays as it is. We live in a world where everything changes all the time, there’s nothing we can keep. It’s a process we come across daily, sometimes we are very well aware of this, and sometimes it passes by without us knowing it. By creating a huge and transient piece of art, Stephanie Rhode showed the process of coming and going, but at the same time movement and stillness. She demonstrated this in an easy, comprehensible and recognisable way.

In 2007 Stephanie built three thousand houses of sand on the beach of Langeoog | Germany, 2008 in Katwijk aan Zee | The Netherlands and 2014 in Xiamen/ China. Then the tide came in and took, one by one, all the houses, until there was nothing left but an empty beach.

She wanted to find out how the people react to the phenomena of transience when shown and experienced through a piece of art. Everything in life is transient, nothing is the way it was, and everything is constantly moving. Artistic representation and the underlying message are actively experienced. Transience becomes visible in striking and unforgettable way.
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