Environmental Art in the Netherlands: Radius in Delft
Radius Art Center: Delft, Netherlands
After two months as a guest artist at Foundation B.a.d in Rotterdam, I became aware of the significant cultural attention given over to issues concerning the environment. The Netherlands – referred to as a low country with much of its land below sea level - has been in a forever battle against the sea, and subsequently there have been a multitude of ways –through human intervention- to ameliorate its more destructive impacts. By destructive, I’m referring to the types of floods and storms that put human life and property in peril.
Pilar Mata Dupont + Erika Roux "Scenes from Polder Western "
That so many artists and art initiatives are now drawn into the fray makes for an interesting mix of esthetic presentations, for there are a host of constituencies – human, non-human, political, environmental, and economic- all battling for the prioritization of land use with the oncoming reality of climate change. At the nexus of the battle is the conflict between economic priorities and environmental damage, and the narratives that delineate such conflicts. It is no surprise then, that ‘human intervention’ most often places economic imperatives-over environmental impacts.
I have been most impressed by a relatively new art space in Delft, just outside Rotterdam; the Radius Center for Contemporary Art and Ecology, that works with “artists and other stakeholders to tell the urgent and necessary story of system and climate change through visual art”. The premise of Radius is to uses research within art-based projects, to articulate the concerns that are present in these conflicts, and to educate the public into fostering new alliances with the natural world.
Pilar Mata Dupont + Erika Roux "Scenes from Polder Western "
As an example is a commissioned four-channel video work by artists Pilar Mata Dupost and Erika Roux Lowland Melodies, a Polder Western, that uses dramatic narrative vignettes and songs within the cinematic trope of the Western, to convey the complex issues concerning land use amongst certain varying constituencies(farmers, scientists, climate activists, politicians). The work conveys the likely effects that are posed by this looming crisis, and posits that -while the impacts of climate change are understood scientifically- they not thoroughly embraced culturally or politically.
Another current exhibit, at Radius, From Raster to Vector: the Netherlands as Profit Landscape, show a series of works that follow the destructive capacities to natural habitats that are the result of capitalist incentives. One such work is the documentary Under Six Meters of Sand by the Rotterdam-based studio Berkveldt, which delves into the environmental damage that resulted from the expansion of Rotterdam’s Europort. Making way for this expansion, required the obliteration of two villages, as well as the total loss of the nature reserve De Beer, all buried beneath six meters of sand as part of the land reclamation process.
As issues of water and land-use foster cultural and political divides amongst the populace of the Netherlands, it is laudable that an art space is willing to foreground and support works that educate and illuminate the environmental problems that the Netherlands –specifically- must confront for it’s long and short term sustainability.
Mandy Morrison, Rotterdam, Summer 2024
“Push Me Pretty” Mandy Morrison’s video Installation at Sondheim Semi-Finalist Exhibit at Maryland Institute College of Art (part of Artscape 2024).
Mandy Morrison is an artist living and working in Baltimore Maryland. She spent three months as a guest artist at the B.A.D. Foundation in Rotterdam.
You can find out more about her work on Peat and Repeat and her website. She’s also on Instagram at @mandy_morrisonart
UPCOMING: Essays and Interviews
An essay on the little known but exceptional work of Jack Greene — we hope this will familiarize people with his work.
Part II of Interview with Elke Luyten.
Interview with Anna Sang Park
Interview with Coder/Herbologist/Film Ace, Artist and Poet, Meredith Finkelstein
Essay on the work of Francine Hunter McGivern by Carter Ratcliffe
Interview with Daniel Rothbart, whose exhibition at Galerie Depardieu opens in September
PEAT and REPEAT BOOK SERIES:
Peat and Repeat is excited to announce that we are creating an artist book series that will include programming and workshop endeavors. We are launching a fundraising initiative for this series. More on this soon.
We really do rely on tax-deductible donations to keep going! The more we can fundraise the more projects in the community we can produce and our intention is to expand our community outreach.