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Thanks to Wallworth at the Holland Festival one last look up from beneath a dying sea.

The dome of Artis Planetarium is made for stars; it is not a shiny Imax canvas. That the images in Coral: Rekindling Venus by Lynette Wallworth therefore do not splash off the screen is to be expected. Wallworth, a close friend and colleague of ANOHNI, is prominent at this year's Holland Festival and made Coral, Rekindling Venus exclusively for planetariums. It is a video artwork, more than a compressed version of Attenborough's Blue Planet.

I will honestly confess that that impressive series made me more aware of the need to change our lives than Wallworth's film. Her images are more designed to overwhelm you in the splashes of colour and incredible versatility of this strange alien world we are destroying, even before we have properly fathomed it.

Big and small

Because you look upwards, that otherworldliness is even more palpable. It makes you feel insignificant. This insignificance should protect us from the unlimited plundering of the reefs, whether for tourism or not. Big and small flow into each other, scale does not matter: what matters is a world that is not made to be admired by us, but that is beautiful anyway. All because of itself alone.

Whether we have something to do there, and at what cost? You can think about that for yourself because the film doesn't tell you. That it just happened to be announced yesterday that the North Sea on the east coast of England and Scotland has become so warm that any life there may become impossible this year was only something Wallworth referred to in her introduction.

In the Netherlands, the death of that sea is not yet big news either, because the toxic sulphur fumes that will result have not yet reached the coast of North Holland for now. And if not, we always have the pictures.

Seen: Coral: Rekindling Venus by Lynette Wallworth at the Holland Festival.

Wijbrand Schaap

Cultural journalist since 1996. Worked as theatre critic, columnist and reporter for Algemeen Dagblad, Utrechts Nieuwsblad, Rotterdams Dagblad, Parool and regional newspapers through Associated Press Services. Interviews for TheaterMaker, Theatererkrant Magazine, Ons Erfdeel, Boekman. Podcast maker, likes to experiment with new media. Culture Press is called the brainchild I gave birth to in 2009. Life partner of Suzanne Brink roommate of Edje, Fonzie and Rufus. Search and find me on Mastodon.View Author posts

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