What comes easy in nature, because inherent in the ecosystem, can be a lifelong learning curve for humans.

Outside, the tops of the oaks are discolouring. After an excessive summer, the trees slowly draw their energy in for dying, a naked canvas that becomes the basis for budding and flowering. There is no resistance to that universal cycle. Nature is constantly in surrender.

We humans are also nature, but we do anything but surrender. We think we are smarter than natural intelligence and believe that subduing nature will bring us the supreme good. However, it takes energy to go against that natural pursuit of balance. For a long time, we have been able to close our eyes to this, but in the meantime, the real cost of this behaviour also penetrates behind our eyelids and we are overcome by nightmares – not only in our sleep.

Open your eyes! For years, we have been trying to make our industry more sustainable. We scrape and file until we can shove that artistic practice and that art house into the most sustainable box possible. But there are limits: from where does the underlying practice bleed and do you lose pieces of its essence? After some time and many efforts to fine-tune our practices, the alley ends and we don’t know how to make our work even more sustainable without quitting.

Today, the time of scraping is behind us. Trying and experimenting out of idealism, a sense of responsibility or guilt seems like a luxury in the growing chaos we swirl deeper into. Increasingly, we have to cut and trim from necessity. It is no longer about reducing our impact – impact is catching up with us. The guardians of balance are hot on our heels.

This is the tipping point where the walls of our tightly bricked structures break open and new possibilities can emerge. Radically rethinking practices. Falling back on the essentials, and from there weaving a new, lighter practice in balance with the planet. Agile in cyclical growth where breakdown, reflection and rest are given as much space as creation, decisiveness and presentation. Open, so you can connect with other tissues in times of need and more resiliently ride out a storm. Surrender to not knowing, to uncertainty and instability, but confident in the intelligence of nature and the dance of balance.