SENNE

For The Senne, I collected water samples from the river all the way from the upspring to the lower course. In order to catch plankton and fine particles I made a net using a kitchen sieve and a stocking. In the next phase, I took the samples from the net and placed them on microscope slides with a pipette. From each slide, I then selected a microscopic area and recreated it in watercolour.

The microscope reveals fantastically beautiful colours and exciting little creatures in the dirt, most of them coming from waste oil, plastic, toilet paper fibres or unspecified organic waste. The samples that were taken in the vicinity of Brussels show clearly how pollution gets worse. A set of Petri dishes with dried substance from the water samples also shows how the river gets gradually muddier.

The second and perhaps a more playful part of The Senne is called Les meilleures bières belges - The Best Beers in Belgium.