Dwelling on elevated lines

Abstract

This research rethinks Dutch dikes through a performative mapping process, expressing them as lived boundaries that are made and experienced. It starts from the observation that dikes have increasingly been stripped of their physicality in cartography. I suggest that this simplification reflects our physical disengagement and diminishes our sensibility of the togetherness of land, water and sky. In the need for situated perspectives, this project approaches dikes as physical bodies in ongoing negotiation with their environment. Dijkhuis Veere (1650–1944), once a solitary house on a sea dike in Zeeland, serves as case study to explore how an affective understanding of land–water boundaries emerges through the lens of dwelling. Grounded in material discursive theories and informed by historical cartographies, family archives, and site visits, an experimental mapping process unfolds in which ink, gesture, and materiality play an explicit role. In doing so, it questions the notion of the line and reconceptualizes dikes as boundary-places of affective exchange.

Keywords: performative mapping, affect, dike house