Performance | Collaborative Research DAE | IBAR

Through the interaction of wind, water, sand, and time, dunes emerge as essential actors in delicate cycles of ecosystems. These ephemeral landscapes transcend land-water boundaries, creating subterranean systems, filtering and collecting water that sustains life, and fostering biodiversity. Through Fluid Spaces, we seek to contemplate the interconnectedness of these elements and the impossibility of their separation.

It is in the nature of dunes to constantly be in motion. Modernist modes of ecological planning have established a desire for control, leading to the paradoxical endeavor of stabilizing the dunes. In the Netherlands, the long-lasting artificial reduction of dune dynamics is currently seen as a threat to ecosystem cycles. Extensive stabilization practices may offer short-term security but hinder the dunes’ ability to shift and evolve, stifling biodiversity and diminishing their capacity to collect water.

Through our installation, we take the position of rewilding the dunes, recognizing the inherent fluidity as a condition to be restored and sustained. By embracing an attitude of “Becoming Mud,” we emphasize a need to shift toward a more organic model of open-endedness, flexibility and adaptation, and away from a mechanistic model of stability and control.

https://thirst.iabr.nl/projects/fluid-spaces-embracing-the-dunes-as-a-shifting-landscape