The Amstelpark lies directly along the Amstel, a remnant of a northern arm of the Rhine delta. Once a boggy piece of estuary, it is now a high-level, dammed water with no clear beginning and no clear end, with technology allowing it to flow in all directions. The Amstelpark lies on the edge of where the last ice cap once reached, which changed the course of the Rhine from a northerly flow to a westerly one, as we know it today.

For her solo exhibition Between No Longer and Not Yet, Van der Eijk employs artistic methodologies to gain a better understanding of the Rhine Delta. Solitary and collective field and archival research, material experimentation and technological mediation are implemented to allow us to listen to the river itself. Xandra’s practice is an attempt to co-create with the river, tapping into the artistic knowledge from its sediment, water, riverbank plants, seeds, stones and other inhabitants to gain a better understanding of the river as a living entity.

River Garden

River Garden forms a space that centers artistic research with the live(ly) materials from the delta. During the research period, the experiment’s results gradually expand, and the audience becomes both a witness and participant in the ongoing artistic process. River Garden is a space in becoming: an embodiment of the overarching themes of Between No Longer and Not Yet.

Central to the front space is an eight-channel soundscape featuring collected scientific recordings of fish in Dutch waters, some of whom are on the brink of extinction. Read more about the artwork-in-becoming Fishes’ Lament on its dedicated page.

The second work in the front space is Future Remnants [a body of research].

Juxtaposing the harsh reality of heavy industrialisation and pollution with the positive, rapid evolutionary development of minerals, Future Remnants started in 2017 as a material research project using all kinds of staple household solutions that are widely available and testing their material reaction to the main industrially mass-used metals. Its purpose is to produce a broad array of crystallisation and patination effects that demonstrate the very real and lively responses between materials. On show are a series of samples and objects showing different stages of response: some samples are seemingly static, others severely degraded, and some are still actively and visibly reacting, even after years.

The work is relevant in the context of the river research because part of the sample collection shows the elaborate work with the highly polluted sediments of the Sydney estuary.  Exposing metals to different sections of sediment core drillings (corresponding with different historical events and timelines), the process shows how this methodology evolved over the years and is now applied to working with the materiality of place. The research on Sydney estuary sediments was peer-reviewed and published on Anthropocene Curriculum as a response to participating in a series of workshops with the Anthropocene Working Group organised by HKW and the Max Planck Institute.

In the back room, a newly commissioned installation was realised: Mother of Pearl. In Mother of Pearl, mussel shells from the Amstel receive care and protection after violence. Read more about this artwork on its dedicated page.

At the end of the exhibition, art historian and cultural analyst Mara Ledeboer Boviatsi interviewed Xandra about their artistic research with, by, and through the river system.

Between No Longer and Not Yet is part of a series of solo projects in which Zone2Source invites artists to use the exhibition and the park as a living laboratory for co-creation and collective research, together with human and other-than-human actors of the Amstelpark. In doing so, the public becomes part of both the results as well as the artist’s artistic processes through various public programmes and engagements with the artists on site. The research process and its outcomes will be documented during the exhibition and published at its culmination.

Opening
Sunday 30 June
15–17 u
Finissage
Zondag 15 September
15–17 u
Location
Het Glazen Huis
vr–zo, 13–17 u
Amstelpark, Amsterdam

Between No Longer and Not Yet is generously supported and made possible by Zone2Source and Mondriaan Fund.