LUCTOR ET EMERGO is a complementary case study to NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE IN A PLACE WHERE DREAMS BECOME REALITY. While the latter was inspired by contemporary phenomena of land reclamation processes in South Korea, the former is dedicated to the history of these land reclamation practices that developed in the Netherlands over centuries and have been exported worldwide.

Luctor et emergo (to fight and to rise) is the motto of Zeeland, which repeatedly lost vast territories in storm floods since the medieval ages. They were reclaimed with immense effort during the following centuries. Juxtaposing this worldview with Nothing is Impossible in a Place Where Dreams Become Reality (the claim of a Korean construction corporation) illustrates the anthropocentric approach and belief in technological progress that characterises human actions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. While the first statement is based on the fight against nature, which is nevertheless acknowledged as a powerful opponent, the latter understands natural resources as modelling clay serving the fulfilment of human desires.

The case study was inspired by papers of sociologist Wiebe E. Bijker and art historian Ann Jensen Adams on the political, economic and socio-cul­tural dimension of the Netherlands’ fight for their territory and thus against water. Adams also points out how the rising interest in landscape painting is co-related to increasing efforts to reclaim land from the sea. On the one hand, land became a means of investment that deserved depiction. On the other hand, landscape transformation caused nostalgia for disappearing lakes and marshes, leading to a desire for idealised landscape representations. The identification with landscapes also increased during the fights for independence from Austria and Spain – and it blossomed further with colonial and early capitalist enterprises such as commercial land reclamation projects that became popular investment opportunities. Thus, landscape painting particularly flourished when the identification with territories correlated with political and economic ambitions. Comparable developments in other imperial and/or colonial contexts have been compiled by W.J.T. Mitchell in the volume “Landscape and Power” in 2002.