Origin Stories: Rhine River beginnings, endings, and becomings

Join us for an intimate dialogue at Het Glazen Huis, where we will explore how Rhine river narratives and imaginaries can nourish or block more attentive ways of living with water, place, and each other. Resulting from the multi-year programme “Hydroformations”, originating at Zone2Source in 2024 and following the “Rhine River Lab: Meeting A River” that was held in October 2025, we embrace the Rhine as a lively assemblage, foregrounding the river’s own agency in shaping histories, infrastructures, and everyday lives.

The event also marks the launch of our online platform, which documents the Rhine river journey so far and serves as a living archive for current and future developments. This evolving online space gathers articles, field notes, poetic reflections, and methods that engage the Rhine as an entangled field of human and more-than-human agencies, resistances, and possibilities.

Listening to the Rhine underwater, guided by Kristina Mau Hansen. Rhine River Lab, 2025. Photo by Xandra van der Eijk

In a circular, stage-free setting, our moderator Julée Al-Bayaty de Ridder will guide an open discussion. Topics are guided by our guests joining from their specific expertise and informally sharing their perspectives, as well as by you, the 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.

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.

18.00-18.30 Walk-in

18.30-18.40 Welcome by Alice Smits & Julée Al-Bayaty de Ridder

18.40-18.55 Performance by Kristina Mau Hansen

18.55-19.35 DIALOGUE I w/ Xandra van der Eijk, Anne Jesuina, Anneke van Veen

19.35-19.50 Screening of Carrying the River by Maud van den Beuken

19.50-20.30 DIALOGUE II w/ Maud van den Beuken, Jelmer Teunissen, Gerard Litjens

20.30-21.30 End of programme

IMPORTANT: Event takes place at Het Glazen Huis, in Amstelpark. Closest entrance is via the Red Bridge. The park closes at 22.00.

This event is made possible by Mondriaan Fund and supported by Zone2Source.

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Host or Publisher Xandra van der Eijk