Satellietgroep – Public Expedition Zandmotor #5

Satellietgroep – Public Expedition Zandmotor #5

Satellietgroep aims to redefine the Zandmotor – as building with nature –  as the largest contemporary cultural statement of the anthropocene era we now live in. It is a time machine that transports us from holocene (affected by nature) into anthropocene (affected by mankind). This newest innovation is built with sand from the bottom of North Sea which also brought ashore mammoth fossils. The Zandmotor is called building with nature, as we more or less invite the sea as a partner to help shape coastal protection by putting huge amounts of sand on the foreshore. The result is a dynamic extension of the coast, a new controlled wilderness that slowly transforms into a spit and lagoon – similar to the Curonian Spit and Lagoon at Nida in Lithuania where out international cultural partner is based. But the Zandmotor is built to dissolve around 2031.

Awareness rises that the antropocene era we now live in may provide no escape for nature and thus for mankind. Ecosystems have no boundaries. We need to engage with global issues in order to survive. But how do we make these abstract and large topics relevant and actual in our daily living environment? In the Netherlands this means being faced with global prospects of rising sealevels, shrinking lands, disbalance of salt and sweet water, rivers too full of low, a country – mostly below sea level – we need to re-invent coexistence of man and water, develop new insights both on ecology as on technology in order to realize a healthy, sustainable and safe future. The great flood of the southern parts of The Netherlands in 1953 instigated sixty years of Delta Works with dikes and dams  – now called building against nature – have recently been completed. As a result of building dikes extra pressure was put on the coast, resulting in a disbalance of salt and sweet water. The Dutch recently made a complete turn around in the way that we now invite the sea as a partner to help shape the coastal protection with the sands we put in front of the shores.

This phenomenon is called Zandmotor – building with nature – rather than building against nature. This shift from holocene era – in which nature was the force that affected changes – to the anthropocene era – in which mankind affects and even directs nature – is a tremendous conceptual shift. The Zandmotor is a time machine that transports us from the holocene (affected by nature) The transitions of the Sand Engine are carefully monitored by scientists and engineers.

Satellietgroep adds the first and foremost artistic researches and invites artists as ‘alchemists’ to develop artistic research on site, engage with local experiences and scientific knowledge and present their explorations during public expeditions on the Sand Engine.