Leaky Turns: Stories from Amsterdam’s Waterlands

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What becomes of water when we look at it through the lens of different artists and researchers? And how might it assist us in looking at the world differently? Seven practitioners individually welcome us to a water-related place in Amsterdam, and explain what this place tells us about water when we listen, look, and think carefully. Each interview is preceded by a listening exercise, guided by the voice of the interviewee; intimately connected to their chosen location. These recordings can be experienced onsite, or wherever you find yourself, with a moment to spare.

  1. Müge Yilmaz

    09/11/2025

    Müge Yilmaz

    Drawing from her research on salinization and her long-standing relationship with water, Müge Yilmaz reflects on pollution, salt-loving plants, and the importance of understanding water not just as a resource, but as a living presence shaped by – and responding to – human and non-human forces. In her work with the collective 4Siblings on a semi-urban, semi-wild plot in Amsterdam, they explore growing food and engaging with ecology through direct, embodied experience and praxis, rather than solely relying on theory. Born in Istanbul, Müge Yılmaz lives and works in Amsterdam. Her research and artistic practice presents speculations influenced by feminist science fiction and proposes future narratives through installation, performance and photography. She has been a resident at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, a researcher at Rietveld Academie, is a co-founder of 4Siblings collective and is the admin of @feministcifi.

    11 min
  2. President Allendelaan 3, Amsterdam

    09/11/2025

    President Allendelaan 3, Amsterdam

    Listen alongside Müge Yilmaz to notice the presence of water, and its movement all around you.

    1 min
  3. Anne Dessing

    09/11/2025

    Anne Dessing

    In her teaching project with students from Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Anne Dessing focussed on drawing water. She reflects on how the fluid and elusive nature of water invites new ways of perceiving, representing, and understanding it—not as static, blue shapes on a map, but as an omnipresent, connective, and ever-changing phenomenon. Anne Dessing is a Dutch architect. Her practice, Studio Anne Dessing, operates at the intersections of art, research and architecture. She researches architecture through exhibitions, installations, drawings, models, interiors and (temporary) buildings. She uses the discipline’s powerful representational techniques as tools to understand societies as complex aesthetic systems.

    10 min
  4. Veemkade 1226, Amsterdam

    09/11/2025

    Veemkade 1226, Amsterdam

    Listen alongside Anne Dessing to feel the ground under your feet; read the place you’re in.

    2 min
  5. Radna Rumping

    09/11/2025

    Radna Rumping

    Following a short excerpt reading from her text Shaky Ground, Stubborn Material, Radna Rumping reflects on floating gardens in Amsterdam as poetic, semi-public spaces that blur the boundaries between land and water, control and instability, imagination and reality. She explores how such spaces invite us to dwell with uncertainty and reconsider dominant structures by engaging with affect, material presence, and the legacies of countercultural practices. Radna Rumping is a curator, artist and advisor on contemporary art and culture. Her work involves public space, radio broadcasting, experimental archiving practices, ways of gathering and conditions of (in)visibility.

    13 min
  6. Overhaalsgang 44, Amsterdam

    09/11/2025

    Overhaalsgang 44, Amsterdam

    Listen alongside Radna Rumping to imagine standing on a floating garden, noticing the changes in your surroundings and yourself.

    1 min
  7. René Boer

    09/11/2025

    René Boer

    Amsterdam’s canals can be seen as both historically straightened infrastructures, and contemporary sites of queer resistance and celebration––particularly during the annual Canal Parade. Connecting this local example to a broader research into the straightening and queering of water bodies, René Boer reimagines these waterscapes as fluid, inclusive, and ecologically sensitive spaces in response to the ever-present climate crisis and social contestation. René Boer works as a critic, curator and organizer in and beyond the fields of architecture, art, design and heritage, with a focus on spatial justice.

    6 min
  8. Jonas Daniël Meijerplein, Amsterdam

    09/11/2025

    Jonas Daniël Meijerplein, Amsterdam

    Listen alongside René Boer to imagine what the canal has looked like historically, and what it may yet come to look like in the future.

    2 min
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About

What becomes of water when we look at it through the lens of different artists and researchers? And how might it assist us in looking at the world differently? Seven practitioners individually welcome us to a water-related place in Amsterdam, and explain what this place tells us about water when we listen, look, and think carefully. Each interview is preceded by a listening exercise, guided by the voice of the interviewee; intimately connected to their chosen location. These recordings can be experienced onsite, or wherever you find yourself, with a moment to spare.

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