Dear island chaser, welcome to the ‘’Institute of Poldering‘’!
We were a group of (low) tech performers at the Oerol festival 2015. Our project tries to evaluate the human impact on nature, but also interdependencies (between humans and nature). We see the landscape of the island as a large construction site, where man in the course of centuries has modified nature through various interventions, creating a constructed landscape, with positive and negative consequences. The meadow birds are attracted to the agricultural grassland habitat in the polder made by man, and now that they are there, we have a responsibility for them. Do we continue with profit maximization in agriculture at the expense of meadow birds, or do we protect them at the expense of our profit? A question regarding the future is linked to this; do we prevent the polder from getting lost for agriculture by sea level rise and salinization, also causing grassland birds to disappear? And in what way?
With these ingredients we created a dynamic structure, which deformed and moved under the influence of the choices visitors made, and where during participation in the transformation process they got aware of their choices and the consequences.
The project operated from June 13 untill June 21 between 11:00 untill 17:00 at the crossroad of the Hoorner Kooiweg and the Kunneweg, south of the village Hoorn (Terschelling).
Because we are an international group of students, the main language of our project is English.