We walk on land, but water is present everywhere. When you are on land, can you feel a presence of water?
For everyone it will be different, touching our earliest experiences. Nightwalk 2019.4 (18 april) will take as its starting basis a guided contemplation of how water shapes the various (urban, natural, and other) landscapes we traverse. Then we will walk, and allow the insights to vibrate with what we encounter.
One thought to contemplate: the coast of the Netherlands (Scheveningen, Middelburg, Bergen, etc.) was constructed - an intricate and sophisticated system of pumping, draining, moving and barring water - which developed over centuries to manage the delta of the Rhine river so people could inhabit it. As a result, another coast is the sea-level coast which runs just west of central Utrecht. West of this coast the landscape is entirely under sea-level. In Utrecht we live on an invisible beach.
This is just one of many ways to think about water’s closeness to us…
Arkesteijn’s map of current areas under sea-level (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)