Artist in Residence programme

The Artist-in-Residence (AiR) programme builds on earlier Waterwijs exploratory research into art–science collaborations in the water sector (Kunst/Wetenschap-Samenwerkingen voor Transformatieve Verandering in de Watersector), which showed that such collaborations foster transformative learning and help address complex societal challenges.  

During the presentation, everyone was invited to view the artwork up close and touch it.

Art of collaboration

The previous study distinguished between instrumental and synergistic forms of collaboration:  

• instrumental collaboration uses art primarily as a tool to support science (for example by communicating or facilitating research),  
• synergistic collaboration involves a mutual interaction in which art and science influence each other and jointly generate new perspectives and ways of knowing. The study also highlighted the synergistic approach as particularly valuable for dealing with “wicked problems” where uncertainty, values and human behaviour play a central role.  

Based on these insights, the AiR programme was deliberately designed as a synergistic and embedded collaboration between an artist and researchers at KWR. The aim is to explore how such a collaboration can contribute to new ways of knowing and working within water research. For example, by integrating analytical, experiential and affective forms of knowledge, and by encouraging reflection on underlying assumptions and perspectives. 

Artist in Residence – synergistic art/science-collaboration

We are currently in the midst of a water transition, facing challenges such as water scarcity, flooding, and pollution. Addressing these challenges requires fundamental changes: not only in technologies and infrastructure, but also in how society values water and how the water sector understands and approaches these issues. 

Transformative change involves not only developing new knowledge and solutions for these challenges but also rethinking how knowledge itself is produced. It requires new ways of seeing, knowing and learning. This raises important questions for a research institute like KWR around how we generate, validate and share knowledge, and what might be overlooked? We are looking together at the values and relationships with water that emerge here, and the new meanings we want to explore.

The AiR programme engages with these questions by creating space for reflection on the epistemic boundaries of research practices. Through close collaboration between an artist and researchers, it explores how alternative perspectives and ways of knowing can help address complex water challenges. 

AiR is set up as a process-oriented collaboration in which an artist works closely with a diverse group of KWR researchers across disciplines and levels of experience. Together, they engage in ongoing research practices through conversations, workshops, and participation in meetings and projects.  

The collaboration is intentionally open-ended and evolves over time. Rather than aiming for predefined solutions, it focuses on creating space for reflection, dialogue and experimentation. This allows assumptions to be questioned, alternative perspectives to emerge, and new ways of approaching water-related challenges to develop. 

The water in the vat comes from the ponds on the KWR site. It symbolises how microorganisms cope with the passage of time. They are constantly adapting to changing conditions.

Researcher Elvio Amato is conducting research into PFAS in water. He opens the water dropper at the top of the artwork. Mariko Hori interpreted the substance PFAS, a ‘forever chemical’, in the artwork as a transparent, imperishable plastic drop,

Future relationships between people and water

The project will result in an overview of the meanings of water in the dominant narrative, as well as a set of newly developed narratives that make space for other human-water relationships.

A fourth step (interpretation) will further elaborate how these stories collectively make up a polyphonic picture of water in which different perspectives can co-exist and complement one another. This polyphony provides space to question dominant ways of thinking and contributes to an exploration of more just and future-resilient relationships between people and water.

Researching transformative learning

At the same time, the AiR programme is itself the subject of research. The project investigates whether and how this form of collaboration contributes to transformative learning and explores how such processes can be studied in a research context.  

This includes developing and applying approaches to reflect on and analyse the collaboration process, for example by tracing shifts in perspectives, assumptions and ways of working.  

The results consist not only of tangible outputs—such as an artwork, publications and presentations—but also of insights into how art–science collaborations can be designed and used as a method for knowledge production and systemic change in the water sector. 

Mariko Hori – KWR’s first artist in residence

Following an open call, Mariko Hori was selected as KWR’s first artist in residence from over one hundred applicants. 

Mariko is a Japanese-Dutch visual artist whose work explores the boundaries between nature and artificial systems, presence and absence, and different ways of perceiving and understanding the world. Her practice moves across installation, performance, and research-based approaches, often engaging with material processes that continue to evolve over time, such as water, dust, and rust. Initially trained in architecture, she is particularly drawn to spatial and atmospheric qualities that resist clear definition—subtle presences, shared sensibilities, and forms of emptiness that remain active. Through her work, she seeks to make perceptible what is usually overlooked, attending to conditions that exist before they are fully articulated. 

In the context of this residency, Hori’s interest in water unfolds as both a material inquiry and a way of thinking through relationality. She approaches water as something that carries traces, connects bodies, and exceeds human perception, inviting attention to temporalities and agencies that remain largely unseen. Rather than seeking resolution, her work dwells in states of ambiguity, where observation becomes a form of care and where new sensitivities toward water and its entangled worlds may begin to emerge. 

Within the AiR programme, Hori’s role is not to illustrate research outcomes, but to engage with researchers in a reciprocal process of exploration. By introducing alternative perspectives and ways of sensing, her work contributes to questioning assumptions, opening new lines of inquiry, and enriching how water-related challenges are understood. 

The artwork Forever in different ways.