ESTAFETTE - Dutch for Relay

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In the context of the 2026 FilmEU ARE theme ESTAFETTE engages with "Unstable Grounds" not as a metaphor, but as a literal, fluctuating site of survival. The Scheldt estuary—a landscape defined by tidal rhythms and precarious silt—is the frontline of ecological indeterminacy.

The research through VeldAtelier (Caro Van den hole & Julie Van Mulders) and the architectural research project Que Serre Serre (Bert Heytens & Frederik De Smedt) proposes that "instability" is not a crisis to be managed, but a design condition to be embraced. By applying Lo—TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge) to this Belgian context, we move away from the Western obsession with "firm ground." Instead, we adopt a "wetlandforming" logic: an architecture that is as fluid and nomadic as the tides it inhabits.

making off
2026

The project centers on an open-structure steel skeleton—a temporal support structure that functions as a nomadic host. This skeletal framework facilitates the construction of organic, site-specific enclosures made of cattails and hemp. While steel provides the "greenhouse intelligence" for a social and ecological commons, its presence is intentionally transient.

ESTAFETTE uses cinema as a tool, to map these "Lines of Flight." The camera tracks the transition from the rigid steel skeleton of the pavilion to the decaying organic shell, documenting a "sovereignty of the shift." We are not designing a fixed monument; we are designing a relay of energy through a landscape that refuses to stand still. This is artistic research at the edge of the water, where the ground is never certain, but the ecological chain is resilient.

making off
2026

© 2026