This is not a sea

artistic research, artwork — 2024

For the Vloed exhibition in 2024 the aim was to focus on the relationship between people and the sea. Together with Julia July van Duijn I conducted artistic research on the North Sea coast. 

Nautical charts from different decades have been placed side by side to determine the impact of humanity on the North Sea. Symbols of human intervention at sea have been mapped. We see borders, restrictions, prohibitions, demarcated areas, guiding arrows, as well as pipelines, wind turbines, and cables. These have been counted and collected over time and are presented again in a newly organized form.

1998

2003

2024

As a young sailor on the North Sea, I felt a great sense of freedom, a feeling that you could literally sail in any direction. At the shipping lane, of course we had to look to port and starboard for an approaching oil tanker. And we avoided sandbars, marked with buoys and indicated on the chart, but otherwise, you were allowed to sail freely almost anywhere.

I felt the need to explore that freedom. I compared old and new versions of nautical chart 1801 from the Hydrographic Service of the Royal Netherlands Navy. I specifically chose the section between Rotterdam and IJmuiden, a section I often look at during beach walks. The results shocked me, frankly. The official charts themselves show significant changes between 1988 and 2024. To investigate this further, I searched for the changes on the charts. I isolated restrictive buoys and forbidden areas, pipelines, structures, shipwrecks, and wind turbines and arranged them in new ways to show the differences: schematically and randomly. On the floor of the exhibition, I grouped the isolated symbols I found on the charts from 1998, 2003, and 2024, demonstrating the enormous growth in activity.

This is not a sea (2024)

Research, concept, graphic design, installation: Jos Agasi
Installation with Julia July van Duijn
6 nautical charts 54 x 38 cm, 6 prints 30 x 30 cm, 704 printed re-board blocks 10 x 10 x 1,6 cm