If the land floods to protect us, can we learn to flood differently? Or more precisely: Can we become landscape enough to feel when the water is rising?
A performative research project in De Onlanden exploring human–water cohabitation through embodied rituals and ecological observation.
Low Lying Water Rituals for Rebel Lands
How do we understand a landscape that is constantly changing between land and water?
Low Lying Water Rituals for Rebel Lands grew out of an extended period of artistic research in De Onlanden, a wetland area between Groningen and Drenthe shaped by water management, ecological restoration and human infrastructure. The research explored how water influences the landscape and the lives of its many inhabitants, from water managers and ecologists to birds, otters, deer and other creatures living in and around the wetlands.
The work developed from observing these relationships and asking how they might be experienced through the body. How can we learn from a landscape that is never entirely land, water or infrastructure, and whose boundaries continue to shift?
Inside the barn at De Onlanderij, the landscape took shape as an installation of water, clay, plants, images and imagined creatures. Three stainless-steel basins held artificial floods inspired by the area's water systems. Images of creatures imagined for De Onlanden appeared above the water, somewhere between possible inhabitants, sightings and myths. River clay was shaped into a frog, while reeds became instruments. The water workers moved between the basins, pumping, pouring, carrying and returning water.
The installation was activated through a performance in which water was moved between bodies and containers, clay was transformed, reeds were sounded and the audience became part of the unfolding actions. These gestures brought attention to the work involved in living with water: managing it, making space for it, carrying it and depending on one another.
By bringing water infrastructure, ecological research and imagined life together, the project considers the wetland as a place shaped by different needs, forms of knowledge and ways of living. It asks how we might take part in this changing landscape, not only as observers or managers, but as bodies that are also affected by it.
Enter the flood. Learn to carry. Lose your footing. Find each other.
Spatial Soundpiece courtesy of BigBSTRD and Can Demren : Listen Here (link redirects to soundcloud)
Low Lying Water Rituals for Rebel Lands (2026)
Presented within Blowing into the Fish’s Mouth
Commissioned by Into Nature
12 September — 25 October 2026
De Onlanderij, De Onlanden, Drenthe
Presented within Blowing into the Fish’s Mouth
Commissioned by Into Nature
12 September — 25 October 2026
De Onlanderij, De Onlanden, Drenthe
Performers: Valentina, Kasia, Samantha & Lex
Soundscapers: BigBstrd & Can Demren
Photography: Sijtze Venema
Soundscapers: BigBstrd & Can Demren
Photography: Sijtze Venema
