Casco Art Institute

An exhibition with Wapke Feenstra from Myvillages and Rural School of Economics. Rerooting in the Polder was conceived through the conversations, collaborations, and conspirations with...

As a third public activity in the context of Wapke Feenstra’s Rerooting in the Polder, we ask: What’s beneath the surface? We depart from our courtyard and into the surroundings, joining a walking excursion that brings us into dialogue with geology and archaeology as we attune ourselves to the layered grounds of Utrecht. Together with Wapke and Kim Cohen of Utrecht University’s Physical Geography department, we drill into the earth, venture underground, and follow the shifting traces of what lies beneath, opening to encounters and stories carried in the soil. This collective activity extends from the geological animation featured in the exhibition, which you may visit before or after the excursion. Taking the platanus tree in Casco’s courtyard as its anchor, the work descends from its roots through strata into a living archive where geological time and farming histories intertwine, revealing what has shifted, grown, or remained concealed. The storyboard arose from the storytelling of Kim together with Herre Wynia, Municipal Archaeologist of Utrecht, and was then hand-drawn in geological notation, where dots stand for sand and crosses for stone.

As a final excursion in the Autumn show Rerooting in the Polder, we sonically thread through the farmlands of Leidsche Rijn and its surrounding edges in a day-long journey of recording and reading. Historically, the enclosure of common land marked a violent shift in relationships between people and territory, transforming shared resources into privatized property and displacing lives and practices. In the Netherlands, commoning took many forms over time: meents, marken, and other collective uses of land. Dikes and reclaimed lands were often managed collectively, and polders were frequently organized as cooperations, but these were quickly prone to privatization as well. In this context, the activity reflects on how communities organize themselves from the bottom up and resist on this land in the face of ecological hazards and power dynamics. Participants are encouraged to capture sounds that embody the ambient poetics of a landscape shaped by human settlements — imagine the distant bellow of cows, the low hum of a tractor, or the reverberation inside a metal silo or construction site. During various stops, we collectively read aloud historical and contemporary texts on topics such as the commons and land use change. Alongside Wapke Feenstra, the tour is guided by Reza Afisina, with a history in radio and field recording and member of the lumbung ecosystem and ruangrupa; Katja Berends, who organizes collective study through Reading Counterpower Amsterdam; and Luke Cohlen, sonic practitioner and member of the Casco team. The sounds from the day are harvested and processed into a sound piece, which will later be aired on Radio Robida, a broadcasting initiative of art collective Robida, based in Topolò on the border of Italy and Slovenia.

We move outdoors for an excursion, partly led by Laura van Rossum, a water management expert who co-runs the small-scale farm Boer Peter with her husband. The farm appeared in our Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills project with the Outsiders–whose member Asia Komarova also joins for the day. Participants are invited to follow paths where waterworks, agriculture, and human settlements have shaped and transformed the land over time, with a focus on the polder, told and guided by Laura’s expertise. As the route crosses fields, we encounter birds moving through the area, and different species of plants that maintain this artificially created ecosystem. Along the way, we discuss forms of living that have been lost, sustained, or revitalized (such as Voedselbos Haarzuilens, which we visit). Asia brings Trusting the Water , an interactive installation by the Travelling Farm Museum collective that filters and questions the assumed purity of Dutch waters. We will test it interactively in waters surrounding Haarzuilens. Visitors are invited to engage directly with the natural environment, reconsidering their relationship with local water sources and the trust placed in them, along with the stories it carries. We end the day stopping by the goat farm, Geertje’s Hoeve.