In October Dymph and I started talking by video-phone. We needed to answer some questions, such as Why are we doing this? What are we going to make? How are we going to make it?
Dymph wants to continue her exploration of the notion "landscape" using cardboard, found & recyclable materials & objects. I plan to continue my work about migration using clay & found materials. Wageningen is situated on the river Nederrijn, an offshoot of the main river Rhine. There are still a large working papermill on its bank in the next village, and nearby a few brickyards, turning the clay in the river banks into bricks.
We thought it would be interesting to vist a papermill and found "De Middelste Molen" in Loenen (http://www.demiddelstemolen.nl/) which has been making paper since 1622 and is the only papermill in the Netherlands still working on water and steam power.
Dymph became interested in the way in which the Dutch manage water, through a very democreatic process that is not politically influenced called "het Waterschap", the regional water authority. Last year I had a guided tour of the new headquaters of the "Waterschap Rivierenland" in Tiel, a beautifully designed 'resource'ful building with an explanation of how a Waterschap functions. So we scheduled a visit.
When we looked into the geological history of the landscape we learned about the stuwallen = lateral moraine and "zwerfkeien = mirgratory boulders. During the last ice age the ice tongues reached the middle of the present Netherlands and because the ice was so thick and heavy it pressed the soil sideways and upwards in front of it, creating dams of over 100 meters high. The Wageningse Berg is such a stuwwal, about 40 meters high. The gletchers also dislodged and moved boulders, which after a brainstorming session gave us the title of our project "Becoming Boulder / Kei Worden", reflecting our own wanderings and the migration of the many people all over the world.