Following Traces ~ Fluid Engagements with a Shared Colonial Past

Following Traces ~ Fluid Engagements with a Shared Colonial Past

19 February, 11-13.00

As part of the public programme surrounding Buhlebezwe Siwani’s project ulwela amaza, members of the research initiative “How to Welcome the Water: Re-Imagining Water in the Neerlandophone Space” from the University of Amsterdam engage with the exhibition, asking how water serves as a medium that connects histories, places, bodies and languages, as well as sparks new questions.

Dr Marrigje Paijmans and PhD researcher Julée Al-Bayaty de Ridder take a transhistorical and embodied approach to the significant intersections of water and colonialism. Bringing together South African, Caribbean, and Dutch poetry with insights on human relationalities with water, the session has a special interdisciplinary educational focus. The discussion will be held in Dutch and English, and reading materials can be shared by responding to the email address below.

As capacity is limited, please sign up to attend and receive materials by emailing info@rozenstraat.com by 17 February. 

BIOS: 

Marrigje Paijmans is an assistant professor in Dutch Literature at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the intersection of ecology and colonialism through the medium of water. For her project ‘Literary Unsettlements’ she analysed how criticism and dissent deregulated seventeenth-century colonial discourses. Her current project ‘How to Welcome the Water’ aims to uncover marginalised stories of water with the aim of decolonising dominant narratives of water management and migration in the neerlandophone space.   

Julée Al-Bayaty de Ridder is a PhD researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam. Her project ‘Relationalities with Water: Re-imagining Water in the Neerlandophone Space’ explores contemporary literature, performance and arts in the Netherlands and former Dutch colonial spaces. The project aims to pose resistance to the age-old Dutch narrative of a ‘battle against the water’ in order to make space for alternative encounters that re-imagine ways of living with water.

How to Welcome the Water: Re-Imagining Our Lives with Water through Marginalised Stories in the Neerlandophone Space: Rising sea, surface, and ground water is imminent in the Netherlands. The promise of improbable techno-fixes merely underwrites age-old narratives like ‘the battle against the water’, which preclude a sustainable coexistence between humans and water. This project explores the neerlandophone space, spanning across former Dutch colonies, for restorative narratives of living with water, for example in oral history, contemporary art, performance, and ritual. Dismantling objectifying narratives of water in historical and present-day water management and migration, this project aims to open new perspectives for sustainable becomings with water.