Origin Stories

Join us for an intimate dialogue at Het Glazen Huis, where we will explore how stories and images about the Rhine can either promote or hinder a more conscious approach to water, place and each other. This event is part of Xandra van der Eijk’s long-term project “Hydroformations”, which began with her solo exhibition “Between No Longer And Not Yet” at Zone2Source in 2024. In October 2025, the Rhine River Lab took place, which will be followed up on this evening as we embrace the Rhine as a living entity. Together with Xandra and her guests, we will listen to stories about the river’s influence on shaping history, infrastructure and daily life.

The event also marks the launch of Hydroformations online platform, which documents the Rhine river journey so far. It serves as a living archive for current and future developments. This platform will feature articles, field notes, poetic reflections, and methods that approach the Rhine as an interwoven field of human and more-than-human influences, resistances, and possibilities.

About the programme

In a circular setting, we will start with an open discussion, moderated by Julée Al-Bayaty de Ridder. Topics are determined by guests joining from their specific expertise and informally sharing their perspectives, as well as by event visitors who are equally invited to share memories of when the Rhine began to matter in their lives. In a weaving of words, we hope to relate all these stories to broader social, economic, and ecological currents. The dialogue is mediated with a short film by artist Maud van den Beuken and Rhine river field recordings by sound artist Kristina Mau Hansen.

We’d love to see you – please book your place here.

Guests include:

Anne Jesuina de Andrade, interdisciplinary artist and ‘Spokesperson for the Living’ at ZOOP Amstelpark

Anneke van Veen, concerned local resident living near Chemours in Dordrecht

Gerard Litjens, co-founder of ARK Rewilding and Bureau Stroming

Jelmer Teunissen, architectural designer and researcher

Maud van den Beuken, artist

Together, we will ask which stories of the Rhine are amplified and which remain in the background, how these narratives distribute responsibility and care, and what they make imaginable for the river’s futures. We invite everyone present to see themselves as co-authors in the ongoing, multi-voiced origin stories of the Rhine and join our river-relations journey.

We will welcome you Thursday the second of April from 18.00-21.00 at Glazen Huis, Amstelpark.