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
Who is De Onlanden? Can you feel this landscape, smell it, hear it speaking? The ground speaks, the water moves, and the soil carries stories of reeds, sunsets, low-lying creatures and ancient transformations. Sometimes the landscape appears as a frog, a strange bird, a flooded forest, a swamp crossed by gas pipelines; always shifting between water and land, resistance and surrender, control and adaptation.
This work grew from an extensive period of artistic research in De Onlanden, approaching the landscape as a living, performative body — one that is constantly changing through its relationship with water. Its identity is negotiated through immersion, resistance, adaptation and time, observed by water managers, ecologists, birds, otters, deer and countless other human and non-human residents. I began to ask what it might mean to enter this ongoing negotiation not only as an observer, but as a body within it.
Inside the barn of De Onlanderij, the landscape became an alternate ecology: a place where water, bodies, plants, clay, infrastructure and mythical creatures could meet. Three stainless-steel basins hold artificial floods, reflecting the water systems of De Onlanden, while images of its imagined creatures hover above the water like memories or sightings. The water workers move between the basins, pumping, pouring, carrying and returning water; river clay is slowly shaped into a frog, while reeds become instruments and the audience is invited into the circulation.
The opening performance activated this landscape through a series of simple rituals: bodies emerged from water, water was poured and moved, clay was transformed, reeds were sounded and the audience became part of the system. For a moment, the cowshed became a training ground for bodies that can hold water — and each other.
Enter the flood. Learn to carry. Lose your footing. Find each other.
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
