Touching Landbodies

Location of activities and scope

Netherlands, National

Strand 2 – Organization and promotion of artistic/arts-based soil-related activities

Executive Summary

Touching Landbodies will be a travelling installation and fieldtrip program centred around anthropogenic soils above Dutch landfills, Technosols. For the first time, maps of all recorded Dutch landfills will be shown, along with 12 sampled soils as an artistic gesture of counter-mapping these hidden spaces forgotten under flora and fauna. Complementary fieldtrips at each location will invite locals to engage closely with landfills, to shift perspectives on the ‘post-natural’ and to evoke intergenerational debate on material circularity and soil. Touching Landbodies offers a rare, situated opportunity to discuss the urgency of land use, waste streams, circularity and soil protection.

Touching Landbodies

Motivation Statement

Touching Landbodies reflects on citizens’ relationship with their ‘natural’ surroundings through the lens of landfills as post-natural landscapes.

On landfills, soils applied above the waste package have turned into crucial infrastructure to be controlled and managed. As ‘nature’ re-emerges due to the anthropogenic soil horizon applied above the waste package, their raison d’etre is easily forgotten. Citizens may not only acclimatise but also appreciate the post-natural topography as recreational green spaces within urban centres today. Other landfills vanished within the collective memory as they were redeveloped, and turned into new operational landscapes such as solar parks, or became overgrown patches amongst forests and agricultural fields.

How could we foster understanding of the lack of circularity that creates soils with man-made materials–Technosols–to this day? How could we collectively denaturalise our gaze upon these wastescapes and shift perspectives on the role of soil?

Sub-project objectives

“Improve soil literacy in society”: Citizens seem to be rarely aware of anthropogenic wastescapes such as landfills in the Netherlands. The primary focus of this project is to re-engage them with the origins of soil pollution and foster discourse on soil – as a non-renewable resource – in the future.
“Reduce soil pollution”: How might the project, through both its arts and scientific approach thus contribute to the discourse on soil protection in the Netherlands?

Challenges and how they will be addressed

For each venue, we aim to reach a diverse audience in age, from younger to older generations (18–60+). Older generations have either visited landfills themselves or recall their creation, while younger generations have primarily dealt with (urban) waste collection or recycling systems and have rarely knowingly set foot on a landfill. Intergenerational discourse is thus highly encouraged. We will address the unique challenge of targeting younger audiences through partnerships and outreach to local organisations and universities (e.g. part of a minor course), and by selecting public venues that attract heterogeneous audiences.

Soil sampling permission for the installation poses another challenge. Former landfills might be situated on private or inaccessible territory. We will try to select sites that are managed by the municipality and organisations such as Staatsbosbeheer (National Forestry Management) service.

Expected outcomes

Travel installation and fieldtrips

Meet the Project Team

Sigrid Schmeisser

Sigrid Schmeisser is a geodesigner and artistic researcher whose practice is characterised by a site-responsive approach. A focus lies on investigating landfills as post-natural landscapes within the long-term project From Centre to Periphery. She has translated this research into lecture performances (Dutch Design Week 2023 and Soil Horizons, World Soil Museum, Netherlands, 2024), landfill radio performance for the Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel (Architecture Week, 2024), and a group exhibition in TENT, Rotterdam, 2025. Since 2022, she has been researching the history of landfilling specifically within the context of the Netherlands and the so-called NAVOS (Nazorg voormalige stortplaatsen, Aftercare former landfills) project. Further works include the award-winning essay “How to Hide a Mountain” (The Avery Review), artistic publications, documentary photography, and methods of counter-mapping contested landscapes through their materiality. In 2016, Schmeisser founded Peak15 design & research studio, which works with academics to exhibit and publish their research.

Contact – Sigrid Schmeisser

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ISRIC

The International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) is an independent science-based foundation with a mission to serve the international community as a custodian of global soil information. ISRIC supports the development and use of soil information to address global challenges through capacity strengthening, awareness raising and direct cooperation with users and clients. Their physical soil collection can be accessed in the ISRIC World Soil Museum (WSM) in Wageningen. ISRIC will be represented by Dr. Stephan Mantel, an agronomist and soil scientist by education. He is an educator and lecturer on the soils of the world and has more than 30 years’ working experience in various countries around the globe, with a focus on Southeast Asia and Africa. Most of his work is dedicated to sustainable natural resources management, among which are projects on sustainable forest management in Indonesia, land suitability and land use planning, and regional to global assessments of land degradation and conservation. He is curator of ISRIC’s physical soil collections and head of the WSM. Further, he coordinates the museum’s educational activities, engaging different age groups.

Contact – Dr. Stephan Mantel

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