The floating Otterdam garden in the main pond of Amstelpark celebrates the return of the otter after a 50-year absence. Other iconic water animals like the moose are still missing.

In her thought-provoking book, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, Anna Tsing describes how we live among ghosts in late industrial landscapes – the shadows left behind when animals disappear or even become extinct.

When animals like the #moose disappear from our landscapes, we lose not only their presence but also the unique behaviours and connections they share with us. It is also a cultural loss.

The experiment:

In #GhostGardening we explore the lost world of the moose through the art of ensemble puppetry.

A small team embodied the spirit of the moose, an incredible creature that once roamed these lands and waters.

With intern Kim van der Sman, Theun first built a cartboard life-size sketch of a moose, but because Moose are water-animals the second version is waterproof.

With a small team we had a first test in Amstelpark exploring what happens when a (ghost) moose returns. Not just how people react, but more importantly how the entire environment responds to its presence, including the ducks, dogs, and all kinds of other beings in the park.

Team reflections on the experiment:

• What do you learn when doing this?
• Could ecological puppetry be a research tool?

Dealing with this large body with a group of people is not easy, but you quite quickly get a feel for a moose’s gait, its rhythm and how it moves through the world, because you need to navigate it physically. You get a sense that it might actually be quite hard for a moose to be agile, maybe they can’t even go backward?

When we moved around with the moose, you just automatically find it is drawn to the leaves of trees and herbs. That just happens. It makes you wander about motivates a moose, what forces drive it to do things.

We were all in charge of different parts of the moose, which also makes you wonder about the significance of its different organs. As the back-legs you mostly just follow, as the head you seem to be the instigator.

What senses would be dominant for moose? What would a homunculus (representation of the relative importance of the senses in humans) look like for moose? When we reached the leaves, we realised it misses lips. Those are probably very important for a moose.

By walking through an environment you get an appreciation of the moose’s senses, even when we didn’t yet go into the water. That might be a great second experiment. Also since most of the birds are around the pond.

We didn’t yet encounter dogs, but the children really loved the moose. (Their first guess was cow, then horse, and then yes!! moose.)

The experiment was on the same day as a pokemon event. So there were lots of people working with ghost like presences.

Overall the experiment felt very intuitive. Even when you are not a skilled puppeteer, it can help you get a sense of the world of moose.

Otterdam, the floating garden in the main pond of the Amstelpark, attracts many beings. Watergardening brings you in close contact with a highly varied community of creatures above and below the water surface.

The world underwater is mysteriously hidden behind the reflective surface of the large pond, but working in the water you encounter this world physically. The massive carp are quite imposing, when you enter their realm it feels like they are in charge. Sholes of tiny fish drift by like nervous clouds. Dragon flies rest on the tips of the plants that float, making it a perfect vantage point for these hunters. When I tie a plant into place a tiny frog swims by, or a spider runs across the water surface, these little floating islands of vegetation are its home and with it live several kinds of caterpillars that eat the crunchy leaves of the irises.

Workshop:

Whenever I finish the work I can’t resist capturing this world, and today a small group of participants are joining me in exploring this world through video.

We have three set-ups to test:

• a Wolfgang GA300 action camera, with underwater casing
• a Montzys flexibel endoscope / HD inspection camera (that fits to a smartphone)
• a Phreeze waterproof smartphone pouch

To avoid just an instrumental interaction with this world, we first take 20min to reflect on our relationship with water. Since participants are from a wide range of backgrounds this gives us a rich tapestry of histories, relations, impressions, and it is nice to share how this submerged world speaks to each of us.

Each participant chooses a set-up to test and we spend an hour and a half testing various methods and locations.

The Wolfgang action camera feels solid, but has a fish-eye lens. The smartphone has way more advanced image software, which makes its footage look more colorful and adjusts better to darkness and brightness. The endoscope can reach into tiny places and it has a light, but its image quality is much lower than the other two.

So each tool has advantages and drawbacks, personally I prefer the smartphone option, because you have that with you anyway, and this kind of underwater pouch works really quite well; the images remain clear and touchscreen still works.

Menselijke parkbezoekers kennen het park vooral vanaf het droge. Misschien hebben nog weinig mensen het park onderwater gezien. Deze beelden geven een indruk van het perspectief van otters, vissen, water-insecten, en andere aquatische dieren. En laat zien hoe Otterdam er uit ziet voor hen (die ogen hebben).

When the otter came back to our city in winter of 2021, I was quite exited. It seemed like a messenger at a time of extreme drought.

Around that time I was watching ‘The Mandalorian’, a Star Wars series, and in it many planets are visited. As a spaceship tore through the clouds of a distant planet called Sorgan, piloted by the Mandalorian, the audience of this Star Wars tv-show was treated to an impressive feat of worldbuilding.

(Planet Sorgan drawing by Theun)

Immediately striking was the bioregional approach through which this world was envisioned; materials, structures, activities, cultural expressions all were directly derived from intimate connections to a swampy, forested biome. It looked as if the design team had taken the swamp and created an entire swamp culture, including means of living for all kinds of creatures, including people, frogs, fish, algue, shrimp and swamp-robots. This – I thought – is ‘otter-world’, in the sense that the otter seemed like it’s totem animal.

Planet Sorgan appeared here – in a way- as an alternate Netherlands, a reimagined Amsterdam, as a total overhaul of what a contemporary human settlement in a wetland-area might look like. This connected in my mind directly to the return of the otter to our city and eventually resulted in otterdam as a floating garden, not a structure made for otters, but a practice inspired by these iconic waterbeings and their kinship relations. To live in a more active relationship with the waters of Amsterdam. Can’t wait to start on a swamp robot!