2022

Rust (Dutch: peace, quietude) is a five-year-long performance that started in the fall of 2022. The performance revolves around perceiving micro-shifts happening in the landscape, that are usually not noticed. We tend to see our environment as immutable in itself, a still slate that we can mould and build on. Performers Vera Slot and Clarinde Wesselink discover the landscape as archaeologists, using their sensory abilities as instruments. Archaeologists do not study the meaning of the landscape by interpreting the many layers of its representation but by digging deeper and deeper into it. Meaning can be allocated to and discovered in the landscape if only we would know how to pay attention to it. Rust does not discuss the methods or results of archaeological research. But to the question 'what is archaeology the study of?' is studying 'the transience of the landscape and with that of ourselves.


Rust premiered October 20th 2022 at IJburg Beach in Amsterdam. The project is supported by Gemeente Oost Amsterdam and in collaboration with Factor IJ, Amsterdam.