Luke Heezen: Aardzee with its five hectares of surface area, is about ten football fields together, one of the largest works of art in the Netherlands. Piet Slegers created an oasis of peace in the always windy Flevoland polder in 1982. He threw up banks of earth that run like waves over the land and that keep you out of the wind. In between, haphazardly placed trees offer protection and a winding path of blue-gray shells makes you think you are walking under water. The whole landscape curves in a pleasant way. The only straight line you find is the water level of the pool in the artwork. 

Aardzee reminds you of the seabed that Flevoland once was. At the same time, you give yourself the peace of a serene underwater world. In reality, that underwater world consists of plants, trees and species. That has to be maintained. Rob Timmerman manages the nature in the artwork. Rob, welcome. 

Robert Timmerman: Thank you. 

Luke: It is a very special place in that flat landscape there, that sea of Earth with rolling hills. Is it easy to maintain?

Robert: No, it's not an easy object, anyway. And a hill is a hill, but it also has some pretty steep walls. So it's not an easy object in that sense.

Luke: No, because how do you approach that?

Robert: Well, we have such a machine that, yes, a one-axis machine and with a double blade bar. And yes, with that we can also mow quite steep slopes, but those slopes are quite steep. It is sometimes that you walk like a dog, that walks a little crooked while moving forward. You also sink down again, but you also want to go up again right away. So it is as if you are crooked a little and then continuously walk up. 

Luke: And then you slide with your seat on its slopes. 

Robert: Yes, exactly. And then you slide down a bit, but you also steer up again. So it's not the most, I sometimes say where you should actually have a mountain man.

Luke: Mountain man? You feel like a mountain man sometimes?

Robert: Yes, just like a mountain man, yes. 

Luke: Do you think it's a nice place actually? What do you think of it?

Robert: Well, it is a beautiful place in itself and especially with our work, which you just mentioned in the summer period, that is my work. And then sometimes it can be quite warm there and that is why you always have some wind and some coolness when the big trees were up and also some shade. So actually it was a nice place to work in warm weather. Ah, so it was really...

Luke: It was really the cooling of a sea almost, the earth sea.

Robert: cooling from here.

Luke: Yes, good. And what do you think is the most beautiful part? Because it is a big work, five hectares, a big work of art.

Robert: Yes, what is the most beautiful? Yes, the artwork is one artwork, everything fits together and as a whole. It is just one whole, I do not know if one part is really the most beautiful. It is, the contrast with the landscape, that is beautiful in itself. 

Luke: Explain, what does it look like around it?

Robert: Well, around it you have an agricultural area that is economically designed and this is actually uneconomically designed, I already said it, the management is difficult. So that is already uneconomical, around it is all flat, this is hilly, that is all a contrast. Yes, around it you have few trees, except along the roads, but in the landscape you have some trees, that makes it nice again. It also gives some depth to those trees, no matter how big the object actually is. If there were no trees, you wouldn't really see how big it is, how far it is. Yes, I think so, actually that's also a bit of a contrast, because it of course represents a piece of the Zuiderzee with those waves. The other side, if you don't have a horizon, you don't see how big it is. And those trees make sure that you see a horizon again. It's actually a contrast with how the sea is depicted, because in the sea you didn't have trees, but here there are trees again. So again a contrast.

Luke: So you're basically saying that because everything around it is so vast, you need that tree to understand that it's actually a very large work of art. 

Robert: Exactly, yes.

Luke: And of course you're a nature man, you maintain all that. Are you also an art lover? Are you an artist?

Robert: Well, no, the main area is nature, but as a sticky landscape we are zipping in my own area, for example also landscape art, Polderland Garden of Love and Fire, in the Pampushaven. Well, around that, we also managed that ourselves, and Robert Morris [Observatorium] we have as a sticky landscape we are. Yes, in itself, I am more of a nature man, but these elements are simply part of the landscape.

Luke: Yes, exactly. And when we look at art, nature sometimes clashes with art, or with intention.

Robert: Yes, I know for sure that in the past I have had an interview with Omroep Flevoland [Media Organization]. But well, the reason was that the beaver [?] had discovered or colonized the Landscape Art Object and that started to gnaw on the trees. And yes, that was also something confronting, nature, encounter, culture. And then we had a number of trees fairly close to the watercourse, then we put gas around them so that the Beaver could not gnaw the trees any further. On other objects we absolutely would not have done that.

Luke: Because you really want to be friends with those creatures.

Robert: That is exactly what we also want. Here was that clash again, the confronting contradictory. That is the art dwelling of the beaver in this case. Yes, when people come up with things again, then there was again omgaze [?].

Luke: Yes, and do you yourself ever have that conflict that you are maintaining and that you think, well, here I am, I see beautiful nature here, but the intention is that I felt the artwork.

Robert: The last time, with Mayen, there was a whole place with beautiful butter trees and beautiful flowering plants. In principle, if we also get a bit of luck from Mayes, we'll leave that. And now, I had made a track through it and I thought, Rob, gosh, the second track that I came back, is also very beautiful, right next to such a bridge, I think people can also look down on it beautifully. I think, I'll go around it anyway. But my colleague, the two of us were Maying, he saw another spot there and he thinks, well, that spot has to go too, because it's art, so it has to support a nice neat girl. And now, after we had cut the object, he said again, Rob, you had left a bunch of buttercups there and I cut them. I said, go ahead, and I had just left it there, people like it, but I say, you are right, because it is art. So here we should let art take precedence and not nature.

Luke: And as a work of art, can you also appreciate it as a work of art?

Robert: Yes, yes, that in all those years, that. And especially, let's say, I've been there that there were also school balances, that the highest class of primary school, or the lowest class of secondary education, that they came there by bus and then had all kinds of assignments and so on, and you actually find that nice, if we also maintain it, then you see that people start using it, I thought that was quite nice.

Luke: Then, who else is it used as a work of art? Who do you find there when you come to get it?

Robert: And also people who know where it is and therefore, if they had a sandwich for lunch and brought a sandwich with them and then went for a walk, that's also nice.

Luke: And then there is a body of water in it, those are fishermen, what kind of fishermen are in there?

Robert: Yes, I'm not a fisherman myself, so I don't really know, but I would give you eel or pike, I don't really know, the boss, I don't really know what I don't fish myself.

Luke: No, no. And you could also think, it might be a kind of Flevoland beach. Aardzee is also the title. It is the swell at home here, also people with a bath towel and maybe sunbathing or is that...

Robert: No, you don't see that. I have seen that you do that with snow, I have done that with my own family, too. And just like you belong to the dikes and there is a nice layer of snow, that you slide down with a sled, I have done that myself with my son. Yes, so that can be done very well, that is a secondary function. But with snow it can be done very well, very well.

Luke: When does the entire artwork look most beautiful?

Robert: Yes, spring is always a beautiful moment, because the trees, the poplars, are poplars poplars with that silver-grey leaf, the colour of the leaf. That budding of those poplars, that is really a very beautiful moment.

Luke: That’s the time, when it’s clean.

Robert: A fresh, silver-grey colour, many people also say that smell that goes with it. I don't smell that smell myself, but many people do. And then you really go to spring and spring is just a beautiful time of year. Yes, that is beautiful. The last time with Mayen, I have not experienced that before, at home with Mayen I also saw a young hare running around that every time in that higher rough, that we then Mayen, he looked for some hiding place and that is actually also a bit dangerous, because you actually do not want to hit the animal. But that image also represents spring and that is simply a beautiful period.

Luke: Yes, I can well imagine that if there is fog or mist, it would also be very beautiful.

Robert: Yes, in the autumn again, that is actually a completely different element of nature. But if it is then very foggy, yes, and especially if it is really denser fog for traffic, that is not really handy, but if you are there and you have a very dense fog, yes, that also gives a whole part effect. What is actually also a nice effect, a number of years from XL atelier an artist from Dronten, who also showed an imagination there. That was actually also a nice interpretation, then you have art, an expression of art, on an art object or in an art, on or in, it just depends on how you look at it, but I thought so too, I have been there myself, I also thought that was a really nice way how you can experience it. It then also became an image there that you were in multiple places, with each time a part of that art component was shown there again. So you actually had to go 100 meters further each time or so, and that was actually also very beautiful.

Luke: So it has become a special place there that action. 

Robert: Yes, in that sense it is for me at least how I experience it, it has become a beautiful whole, yes.

Luke: Yes. And I sometimes go there with my children in the winter. How do you explain to your children what this work of art is, actually, or what this place is?

Robert: Yes, then it has the goal of just having winter fun with your children. How do you portray that to your children? They were very young then, that is no longer possible now. They are now between 25 and 30.

Luke: Yeah.

Robert: Well, I didn't actually make that attempt.

Luke: But how would you put it into words for people who don't really know that much about art, but what kind of place is it, how would you explain that?

Robert: Yes, I really also with that idea of it being a piece of tranquil South Sea, because I'm not going to IJsselmeer or Markemeer, I'm really going back to South Sea. Because you have the wild high waves and with sloping parts, which is what those shell paths also represent. That's how I tell it. Yes, that's my way of explaining it and yes, that vastness and that greatness is also part of that great South Sea, which was there then, so that size fits in there too, because yes, the South Sea was also a very large inland sea at the time.

Luke: Yeah, so it's actually a really beautiful artistic reminder of what history used to be like there.

Robert: Yes exactly, the vastness of the Zuiderzee and the largest landscape art object in the Netherlands, perhaps in the world. That fits in perfectly with that, that is in the same vein.

Luke: Thank you, nice that you maintain it so well and that you occasionally let art take precedence over a beautiful buttercup. 

Robert: Yes, thank you, you're welcome.