These days many closed landfill sites in urban areas are converted to new green spaces covered with a top layer of soil, grass and trees. Once located on a periphery of a big city, they become gradually overgrown by it and rebranded as recreation zones. Their origins become forgotten, and their presence considered ‘natural’. At the time of rapid urbanisation, this project aims to explore what ‘natural’ actually means for such places. It looks into the relationship that people have with their environment, and the local politics in which the landfills are entangled.
How do people who live, work and spend their time close to landfills perceive these contested places, where the legacy of waste streams lies buried under their feet?
Through interviews, subjective mapping and a range of activities on landfill sites, we collectively explore our relationship with waste and inherited paradoxes of these new green spaces. Walking in hidden mountains we talk about waste as heritage, risks and control, acceptance and resistance, and the shifting definition of what ‘nature’ is. This journey connects lived experiences of participants and the sensory reality of the sites through various activities. It also brings us to the questions of ownership and aftercare* for these places and speculative visions of their future.
Commemorating places once sacrificed to waste, Shifting Mountains also aims to bring attention to the fact that despite ever new waste technologies, such as recycling and incineration, the landfill remains with us as a place where the residues of these processes are put to sleep.
As we become further detached from the origins of these places over generations, how might we collectively re-approach them?
The results of this participatory research will be presented in a digital publication.
The project will be presented at the Wasteland Festival 2025 and other platforms.
*Aftercare is a technical term from the waste industry for the maintenance of landfills, such as monitoring, maintenance and soil erosion control.
Would you like to participate in these workshops? Then sign-up via
→ bit.ly/shiftingmountains
Dates and location:
Hoge Bergse Bos (Bergschenhoek)
Saturday 10 May 2025 | 9:30–17:00
Maassluisdijk (Vlaardingen)
Saturday 17 May 2025 | 9:30–17:00
Participation is free of charge, but the number of places is limited. Coffee, tea, snacks and lunch will be offered free of charge to participants. In case there are more applications than available places, we will make a selection that will benefit the diversity of the group.
Please contact Katya Borisova if you have any questions about the project or if you have difficulties with the sign-up form. katya.borisova@thickpresent.com
Shifting Mountains is led by Katya Borisova, Sigrid Schmeisser and Anne Vera Veen. This is a pilot project in Rotterdam, with the ambition to apply this unique approach to participatory research and environmental education in other places in the Netherlands and abroad. This project would not be possible without the support by our partners, experts, and collaborators amongst them are to date Roger Smeets (Omgevingsdienst Smeets), Miguel Teodoro (filmmaker), and Louella Exton (workshop volunteer).