'Between the water & I' explores the formation and separation of the Brabant region, questioning: What signifies ‘Brabant’ as a region now? What happens to the ecology when a land is separated? What are the latent traces connecting Northern Brabant to the former Southern? Today, Dutch farmers are moving with their livestock to Belgium, where fewer restrictions regarding nitrogen emissions are enforced. Meanwhile, Brussels is trying to acquire land from its neighboring regions to increase its agricultural production. This reciprocal situation generates speculation if livestock farming restrictions and agricultural needs can force these regions to interact and reconnect again. The inquiry conveys itself on the Dommel River, which has been connecting and transferring aquatic information between two regions all along. A memory flux of human activities on the adjacent farming lands, being dug, grubbed, and manured.

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          The pollution in water from these acts causes algae to grow and bloom excessively, visualizing the changing nutrient levels in the water. Thus, algae become the essential element, a by-product of the chain of relations for unfolding the excessive land manipulation the project is problematizing. To confront humans and their corruptive actions toward the land, ‘Between the water & I’ generates itself as a set of tools, a mapping apparatus: interpretation of a ‘glove box’, bottles with algae mixtures, a rake for manipulating the waterbody. Complexities of this mediation, between the human - land - river, are revealed and reenacted following the production steps of paper marbling. It becomes a methodology to visually narrate and mimic the causation behind the algal bloom on water bodies. Within this pseudo-aquatic environment, intricate chains of biological, geographical, and political relations of Brabant are captured as aestheticized artifacts.