In Once we were river, Maud van den Beuken (NL / DE) intimately portrays the interior of a water pumping station located in the East of the Delta landscape in the Netherlands. Guided by a voice-over, you become an active participant in the intertwined relation between land and water.

Dikes, pumping stations, locks, dams and floodplains are landscape interventions to keep water in intended locations. The film tries to give space to the polyphony within the landscape, finding out how different entities carry a plurality of agencies.

Maud van den Beuken has been working with experts in the field of water management for the past 8 years, questioning the definitions of the river in relation to cartography. She reflects on the binary understanding of water and land, of rationality and subjectivity, and wonders how a Western society can think and act from entanglements, rather than differences.

This work was commissioned by the IJsselbiennale. Produced with the generous support of the Jan van Eyck Academy, Vroman Foundation and Waterschap Vallei & Veluwe.