The School of Mountains and Waters

The School of Mountains and Waters is a school of unlearning the modern/colonial idea of the human as pre-existent and separate from that which sustains its life. The different activities of the school invite to establish relationships of care between human bodies and bodies of mountains, glaciers, lakes, rivers, estuaries, forests, peat land, and water. 

The School of Mountains and Waters draws on the history of drinking water in the city of Amsterdam, and its distribution among communities in contrast with current and future political and ecological concerns. Almost a third of The Netherlands is below sea level, the delta in which it is located makes it a low-lying country predisposed to flooding. For centuries the country has been battling with waters. The actual process of sea level rise, as a consequence of capitalocenic climate change, bring forth questions of adaptation, energy transition, and social and ecological justice.

This artistic research project is an inquiry into the limitations of thinking about the living territory through the notion of nation-state, thinking with the help of other forms of thought on the way in which waters are co-produced by the different beings/ bodies that take part in its generative cycle.

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