As pollution proliferates, the climate unsettles and a sixth mass extinction looms, water-clearing, carbon-capturing and biodiversity-harboring wetlands safeguard multispecies liveability. Global anthropogenic wetland loss was recently estimated at 21 percent over the last three centuries, a number that pales in comparison to the 70 to 80 percent loss in the highly (agro-)industrialised and previously wetland-rich Netherlands. In recent years, though, some wetlands have returned, usually designated as water storage areas.
This project dwells within one such area, the Onlanden, near the city of Groningen. The Onlanden are a lively alternative to the kinds of monotonous ecologies agro-industrial ‘progress’ has taught us to pursue, even as they remain vulnerable to the ruinous rhythms that surround and pierce them. It consists of a short experimental documentary, viewable below, and an essay, published in Soapbox: Journal for Cultural Analysis, that also explores the Onlanden, as well as detailing my approach to a site-specific ecocinematic poetics. That essay is available in print or pdf.
This project wouldn’t have turned out the way it did without Alice Dekker, who first got me interested in the Onlanden and read, watched and helped me talk through numerous drafts, Lieselot Smilde, who agreed to an interview and taught me a lot about the Onlanden back when this project was something completely different, Jim van der Steege, who, at the very last minute, helped me tweak the film’s sound, and the editors—Jakob Henselmans and Emma van den Boomgaard—and anonymous peer reviewer at Soapbox. Thank you all.