‘The Dutch know about water. It comes and goes. It has a will of its own. It challenges. And the Dutch answer.’ These are the opening words of THE NETHERLANDS MADE IN HOLLAND (1995), a short English language film about the Dutch waterworks. Unprotected, two-thirds of the Netherlands would be covered in water. Schiphol Airport, for instance, is about 10 feet (3.3 metres) below sea level. In THE NETHERLANDS MADE IN HOLLAND Van Gasteren invites us to listen to the sounds of water: the sound of a spade driven into the peat, formed thousands of years ago from sphagnum moss and other microfauna that grew in the watery soil of the low lands; the sound of the digging of ditches to drain the water; the sound of the turbines of the watermills, pumping machines, and sluices; the sound of the building of dikes and dams, the drilling, dredging and guiding of the water; the sound of the waterland itself: the sea, the rivers and canals, the splashing of the water against the dikes; the sound of the seasons, wind, rain and ice; and the sound of the ramming of piles into the soft ground to give the houses and buildings a stable foundation. The last sounds of the film are actually the most important ones: the simple sound of footsteps on pavement. ‘All my life I have had dry feet thanks to the Dutch water management,’ Van Gasteren has acknowledged on many occasions. As an artist and investigator, he questions the things we consider normal and common, such as simply having dry feet. In a country largely situated below sea level this is actually not so simple at all. The significance of water and water management, but also more generally the importance of modern technology and technological innovations that ensure human survival and progress, which Louis van Gasteren has investigated with wonder and interest on many occasions, are the central concerns of this chapter.

Obviously Van Gasteren is not the first or only Dutch artist to have directed his attention to the special relationship between water and the Low Lands.