Water Nation by Kim Spierenburg

Water Nation is a music and film project created by Kim Spierenburg during her residency at the Visual Methodologies Collective at the HvA in Amsterdam.

Consisting of an animated short film, accompanying published music and an article titled “How artistic research can help make history palpable – an artist’s perspective”, this body of work was developed under the program ‘Climate Imaginaries at Sea’.

Using archival material as a starting point Kim worked with mixed digital techniques including AI to generate images that take us back to the Big flood of 1953 (de Watersnoodramp) in the Netherlands. Questioning how it feels to stand before an enormous body of water, this work prompts us to reflect on our own contemporary fears regarding the future of water.

“Water Nation is about fear and loss. I looked for hope in the archive too. I found it in people working together, helping each other and in people putting their faith in machines, working together with them as well. Water Nation is intense and melancholic. It feels like a memory.”

Water Nation has received five awards for best animation at the Berlin Indie Film Festival, Kiez Berlin Film Festival, Paris Film Awards, Bright International Film Festival and Milan Gold Awards. It was a semi-finalist of Austin International Art Festival and San Francisco Arthouse Short Festival and part of Lift-off and Love & Hope International Film Festivals official selection.

Click here to watch the trailer.
And here to listen to the music.