for bodies without borders
In this investigation, I explore the interplay between bodies and landscape, focusing on the transitional ecosystem of the Nieuwkoopse Plassen in the Netherlands. I tune in and experience the constantly evolving, constantly becoming life forms to be with the assemblage of bodies and to familiarise myself with the uncertain ground.
As a temporal state, how does my body become an instrument for understanding the shifting moods, forces, and histories embedded in this landscape?
Photo by Ruben Dijkstal
Through embodied ecological inquiry, I delve into bodies without borders. I tremble with the dynamics of time, space, and self, where land, water, and organic life merge. My work examines symbiotic relationships within a constantly shifting biosphere formed by minerals, plants, bacteria, and human bodies.
By engaging with these landscapes through mapping, writing, movement, and sensory attunement, my research seeks to uncover how corporeal experiences and embodied practices can illuminate the histories, traces, and moods embedded in this uncanny terrain. It offers a philosophical composition that bridges the organic and elemental, the present and timeless, and the visible and invisible, inviting a deeper understanding of how to navigate and co-evolve with a constantly transforming biosphere.
Photo by Ruben Dijkstal
Where Am I?
I am in this state. One of those you can be in—a state of heaviness at first—dense warmth pressing into me, around me. I feel soaked, the air thick with a potent, heady smell that clings to my skin. It is a moment of intensity, of being fully present in the weight of the now. Yet, it is not static. It shifts. The movement around me softens as though the tension has exhaled. The pressure ebbs, leaving space for something lighter to emerge. I am no longer tied down by the heaviness. Instead, I rise, feeling lighter and freer. I hold this moment, and it holds me. There is belonging here—a subtle harmony as though the space has been waiting for me, and I have been waiting for it.
A Living Archive
To say hello to this place is to acknowledge its duality: not just alive but archival. It holds visible and invisible stories spanning thousands of years—a living archive of interactions and transformations. It is a portal between the living and the non-living worlds, where green meadows meet a polder system. Mills turn in quiet rotation, locks hold the water’s longing, and De Meije wends its way as a wiggly peat river, flowing with the excess of the past. This is the Nieuwkoopse Plassen, nestled in the Green Heart of the Netherlands. Here, an assemblage of bodies—lakes, reeds, grasslands, bridges, and former peatlands—form the Dutch tableau. It is a self-organised system in constant flux, deconstructing and reconstructing itself. Its gestures are deliberate, intra-acting in the ongoing process of becoming and engaging with other entities through motion, exchange, and transformation.
Navigating Fluid Boundaries
The swampy bog body I navigate has no borders or definitive edges. It is fluid, porous, and alive. This state and this place mirror my body—a performative agent, porous and seeking. I sense the dissolution of rigid lines, the fading of singularity into multiplicity. The bodies here— of water, Earth, and air—are subjects of curiosity, engaged in deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation. Their longing shapes their forms, their movements, their becoming. Finding myself among others: ducks, hares, ermines, otters, foxes, roe deer, and Nordic voles. Reeds and sundews, valerian and yellow lilies. Dotter flowers and bog myrtle, soft birches and club moss. These forms weave together in the rhythms of life, past and present. Borders dissolve as movements merge and morph, creating compositions of gestures that enfold me within them. I am part of the material body of this place. We are caught in a restless, endless longing, creation, and transformation rhythm.
A Performative Landscape
In this performative landscape, this Dutch tableau, the patterns of the land tell the stories of human adaptation. The subdivision patterns of Nieuwkoop trace their origins back to the Great Peat Mining around the year 1000. The northeastern areas display an irregular, block-shaped division, while linear, elongated plots dominate other regions. The cope subdivision—a system of uniform plots—reflected a growing precision in reclaiming land. Later, rectangular patterns of roads and drainage ditches emerged, remnants of the driers constructed to reclaim land post-mining. Peat rivers once dug to drain the land, became vital pathways. These riverbeds dug deep into the land and served as hubs of habitation, their elevated banks rising above the surrounding subsiding peatlands. The human effort to balance land and water continues—a delicate interplay of ecology and culture.
The Harmonies of the Relational In-Between
This space holds a balanced interplay between bodies—the harmonies of the relational in-between. It is a site of constant deconstruction and reconstruction, where togetherness becomes a performative act. Bodies without borders merge into each other, morphing as they engage in an ongoing process of becoming. As I stand here, I feel the echoes of this flux, the longing of the land and water to exist in harmony. The winter sky hangs heavy, occasionally punctuated by a light shower. At 3.3°C, the west wind remains silent, and atmospheric humidity wraps the area in a damp stillness. This is the Netherlands—a land shaped by water, peat, and human hands—a testament to the interconnectedness of all things.
Photo by Ruben Dijkstal
Photo by Ruben Dijkstal