The port has been, since ancient history, a recognized symbol of the expansion and commercial power of a country. A source of trade and a crossroads of communications, the port has historically favored the development of civilizations. Port cities have always been synonymous with ethnic and cultural contamination, places of arrival and departure, border environments between land and sea where time seems crystallised between the noises of workers at work and the slow passage of heavy ships on the waterfall. During the S+T+ARTS residency, artist Mark Ijzerman became interested in the port environment of Rotterdam, where the largest fuel depots in Europe are located, and where he studied the Ficopomatus Engimaticus. The small marine worm, which arrived from the southern hemisphere, nestled on the hulls of ships, and which also settled in the Netherlands due to the warming of the oceans. In the work Pier Pressure, the artist draws a parallel between the immense infrastructures of the port of Rotterdam and the painstaking but submerged coral reefs of the small annelid. An oil drum attached to the ceiling and immersed in an aquarium is the structure on which Ijzerman grows the microworld of the marine worm, exceptionally in plain sight for visitors. Around the installation, from three screens, as many men, even in front of the evident slow and constant change, sing songs about how the port of Rotterdam was, is, and will always be the same. Supported by the STARTS4Water Consortium, the project throws climate change in the viewer’s face and looks at the uncertain scenarios of industrial evolution, highlighting within the framework of local experiences, the dependence we still have on fossil fuels.

 

Mark Ijzerman – Pier Pressure