From these questions I started my artistic research into Het Groene Schip, the official name of the hill, which resulted in the video installation Shining Sights that I presented at the end of my first year at Sandberg. The work is shot at Het Groene Schip - a hill in the harbour district of Amsterdam made out out of bottom ash, non-combustible residue from burned waste of the surrounding disposal companies. It tells the story of a young woman who discovers a strange flower whose toxic beauty draws her in and touch sets her in trance. The mixing of their chemicals acts as a portal into the same dream again and again. An infinite loop of repetitive realities.

The hill is a joint project between a waste processing company, a contractor, the municipality of Haarlemmerliede (a township bordering Amsterdam) and Staatsbosbeheer (a governmental organisation whose goal is to strengthen the position of nature in the Netherlands). Yet, bottom ash is a toxic product, for which waste disposal companies need to hire developers to get rid of the material. The developers turn the ash into concrete material from which this hill is constructed. An intricate bureaucratic process between the different parties, to be rebranded as ‘Dutch nature’ which I would like to further explore. On the website of Het Groene Schip, the hill described as “an artwork that should attract visitors and functions as a border between the industry of the Westpoort and the recreational reserve Spaarnwoude”. This bears the question how waste can be refurbished, rebranded, repackaged as art? For what purposes does this framing - the naming of an architectural and urbanist project as ‘art’ - happen?

Shining Sights is an ongoing research project. I am planning to find more place like Het Groene Schip - places where waste artificially morphed into ‘nature’ under the banner of art. Shining light on this phenomenon can teach us how the concept of art can be appropriated for potentially harmful infrastructural and bureaucratic projects - a tactic that is not uncommon in the Netherlands. Despite my scepticism of projects like Het Groene Schip, there is a polluted beauty to it - a fake sublime element. I accentuate the surrealism of these projects by creating fictional stories where the investigated places are the arena.