Moments of articulation

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Artistic research articulates insights throughout the research process, with creation and reflection occurring simultaneously, whereas scientific research often postpones articulation until evidence has been validated.

As soon as I come across something while I’m doing fieldwork, I start getting ideas about how to represent it in an interesting way. Different images blend together into new images.

It can function as a performative act in which the moment of articulation itself generates new knowledge and understanding.

An example from the Peat Meadow Atelier project (2023–2025), an artistic research project related to peat meadow transition (from industrial dairy farming to wet farming in order to halt the decomposition of the peat) in which designers and artists collaborate with farmers and residents of the frisian peat meadow area.

Listening to perspectives, wishes, and needs went hand in hand with creating a new narrative for a different relationship with subsiding peatlands. The artistic research here is employed as a transformative process. It is a dynamic approach in which different moments of articulation serve as opportunities to take the temperature of a situation, to sense and express things, and to explore and trigger possibilities.

Part of this multiple year multidisciplinary project was a short investigation aimed at creating a meaningful and tempting image that at the same time represents the landscape involved, which plant species were collaborated with, and what design (new world) is emerging from that collaboration.

The image of upside-down dutch flags (originally a maritime distress signal) displayed along the edges of grass monocultures by farmers and their sympathisants to express dissatisfaction with emissions policy was a powerful one that had been all over local and international media. How could I work (again) with that strong signal and transform it into something new?

![[Campaign image Veenweide Atelier Fries Museum_photo Tryntsje Nauta.png]]

(image, taken by Trynstje Nauta)

We are looking at a reed bed by the water's edge, golden-brown in the afternoon sunlight. In the center stands a young androgynous person with short hair, dressed in white. They embrace a cabinet of roughly the same size and in a similar hue. (The cabinet is actually made from the same reed that it is standing in, with circular technologies that are fit for scaling) The image is upside down through point symmetry, with the watery world appearing above, as the new reality to focus on. The reflections of the water ripples caress the inside of the cabinet. (To get the cabinet in position, I walked it there with a dolly and for the last bit, I had to carry it on my back. A small floating platform had to be made to keep it afloat. The photographer had to stand opposite, wearing chest waders).

The blue tones of the water and sky work in complementary contrast with the reeds, while the white figures stand out against them. It is quite a challenge to create a powerful image in a swampy landscape where you sink into the mud everywhere and need flotation devices under both models just to remain standing.

The process of staging the image is itself a method of inquiry. It provides a form of understanding the peatlands grounded in bodily experience, environmental response and negotiated presence. At an earlier location, we were asked to leave because our presence disturbed the Eurasian bittern during breeding season.

Contributors: Veenweide Atelier / Henriëtte Waal, Gisanne Hendriks, Tryntsje Nauta, Friso Wiersma, Meubelatelier Momentum, Tjeerd Veenhoven, SAM Panels, Wood Saw Mill De Rat, Paper Mill de Schoolmeester, Arcadia Foundation, Fries Museum.

Media Credits

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