“Place a bathtub with Amsterdam surface water in the summer sun for one hour and the algae in the water will produce enough oxygen to let a child breathe for 1 minute. When you consider that one third of Amsterdam is made up of water – lots of bathtubs! – there is therefore an enormously rich source of oxygen here, purely through the photosynthesis of micro-organisms that are invisible but also indispensable. ” Jasper van den Berg can enthusiastically talk about the source of inspiration for The Water We Breathe, the artwork he made with Stichting Nieuwe Helden for the Amsterdam Light Festival.
Van den Berg was able to transfer this amazement to more than 650 students from grades 6 to 8 of primary schools in Amsterdam. They were asked to collect water from their living environment, which was analyzed for oxygen content in a traveling lab. All those pots have become part of a 32 meter long and 3 meter high installation. “They are clustered by neighborhood, creating a water-oxygen map of Amsterdam,” says Van den Berg. “The color indicates the content. It is striking that the ditches of Ransdorp produce relatively little oxygen, I suspect because of over-fertilization. Algae and bacteria are very active in Bijlmer, Noorderpark and Sloterplas. ”
Light sources have been placed behind the pots, making The Water We Breathe look like a mosaic of extra-large LED lights that together form the formula H2O + Light = O2. “It is also reminiscent of the pixels of matrix boards that we have seen so much in the city in recent months,” says the artist. “But they often issued warnings: it is too busy, stay away! This installation has a positive message. It is an ode to the involvement of the youth. ”
No canal route
In previous years, the Amsterdam Light Festival was mainly about festive fun, the current edition has an engaged and topical undertone. This is not least because of the theme: When Nature Calls. “When we came up with it in 2019, we had no idea how symbolic it would become,” admits artist and theater maker Lucas De Man, who will act as creative director this year. “We wanted to start from nature as something that we don’t have to fight or save.”
Initially, a route along the canals was mapped out, as usual, with twenty large-scale light artworks that you can glide past by tour boat – the festival’s proven revenue model. “But then corona came and everything fell into the water. As an alternative, we devised a walking route with fifteen works, where visitors could call up poems and stories about those works on their phones. The second wave also put an end to that. Ultimately, seven works were left that we developed with partners such as the UvA, the province of Noord-Holland and the municipality of Amsterdam. ”
These are also the most substantive works. De Man: “Because we don’t have the pressure of the masses now, we can show complex works that have a story and research behind them. We have the responsibility to make Amsterdam more beautiful in form and content. With this edition we want to contribute to insights about the city. ”
Wide spread
Three works have already been placed, the last four will follow this week and next. De Man has made a film for each work, with the artists but also with scientists and residents. For example, the festival can be visited at home from behind the computer screen, because it is of course not the intention that we pass the works in droves. The wide spread over the various districts also discourages making such a tour. In Nieuw-West, for example, the web of a fictional giant spider can be seen in which colors indicate how spiders weave more irregularly when the air quality decreases. And at the Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc, an ode will be paid to three female scientists: Rosalind Franklin (she was the first to take an X-ray of DNA), Mária Telkes (she was the first to convert solar energy into heat) and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (she ‘discovered’ HIV).
The most eye-catching location, the IJoever opposite Central Station, has been reserved for The Biggest, Smallest Heroes. “We have immersed ourselves in research into Amsterdam canal water,” says Ilse Kok, who made the work with Kawita ten Kate and Renée Westland. “This is often about the presence of E. coli, the bacteria that causes food poisoning, but there are also bacteriophages, small viruses that fight the bacteria. We have depicted them as blue soldiers stepping out of a spaceship and making the E.coli, abstractly depicted with red rings, increasingly blue. Viruses are now negatively in the news, but they keep us healthy. ”
Amsterdamlightfestival.com
