‘In a world saturated with things and images, we try to emphasise the poetry of absence.’ Complicated trajectories culminate in seemingly simple, yet monumental artworks with the artist practice RAAAF. Their work blends visual art, architecture, and landscape in ways that are layered, political, and deeply philosophical. Time, space and vacancy are in constant conversation, mutually reinforcing and competing, questioning the concept of cultural heritage. How should we approach their work in times of increasing climate and war threats?
‘When asked to represent the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale, I didn’t think, “Oh yes, I’m the chosen one”. Instead, I gathered a team of people around me as a collaborative effort’, Ronald Rietveld reminisces on RAAAF’s participation in 2010 with Vacant NL. Our conversation takes place in their studio in Amsterdam. He is an enthusiastic speaker who talks passionately about his work, thought processes and opinions, consistently linking conceptual themes to various RAAAF projects. He is a big proponent of collaboration: ‘You are good at something up to a certain point, and then it stops. At that point, you need others to help you and give you feedback.’ He likes to keep things intergenerational, too: ‘It's good to connect with different generations, it keeps you sharp.’
Two of his heroes are film directors Andrei Tarkovsky and David Lynch: ‘I cried when David died, he was an anchor for me.’ When watching interviews with Lynch, the resemblances between him and Ronald are striking – they both seem to have an unstoppable educational drive to share their vision and craft. Occasionally during the conversation, he naturally finds himself in an advisory role. ‘Don’t be afraid that people might not like your work – so be it. David Lynch didn’t want to make films that attracted a large audience either.’
Ronald Rietveld is one of the two co-founding brothers behind RAAAF, a site-specific art studio based in Amsterdam. Academic philosopher Erik Rietveld operates as his mirror and contributes to the conceptual and philosophical framework of their work, while Ronald draws on his background in landscape architecture. After they participated in the 2010 Venice Biennale, where Ronald and Erik represented the Netherlands, their approach to landscape architecture began evolving into site-specific art installations under the name RAAAF. Over the years, the studio was joined by several young talents like Arna Mackic, David Habets, and Daria Khozhai, who started their own practices after spending more than seven years at the studio.
'Sometimes you have to cut through something to understand its meaning'
Constructions of time
As we dive deeper into the conversation, Ronald paces back and forth through his studio while he pulls models and books from the shelves to support his explanation of conceptual frameworks: a book about brutalist photography, his sketchbook, RAAAF’s publication The Landscape of Affordances, and The Dutch Atlas of Vacancy, which lists all 10.000 vacant buildings in the Netherlands. The cardboard and concrete models for their artworks, which are scattered through the studio, are all handcrafted without the involvement of model-making machines. Each model starts as an unsolicited project without an assignment or budget. It entails a long tinkering process and is part of an even longer and often risky journey, where municipal approvals and applications can sometimes take years, with the possibility of falling through. However, this extensive timeline is not an issue for RAAAF. Time is, in fact, the very essence.
Each project aims to connect the past, present and future. Fascinated by specific sites with specific stories, they dive into deep cultural historical research. National monument Deltawerk // (2018) is a striking example of this. Like most of their works, realising this project took multiple years. The former wave test basin was used to test new deltaworks by creating gigantic artificial waves through the 250m long deltaflume. This construction underwent an artistic transformation by RAAAF in collaboration with Atelier the Lyon. They dug out the concrete wave basin, cut the walls into pieces, rhythmically replaced these, and surrounded the test-deltawork with a lake. These time-consuming projects reflect and emphasise the history of the construction, and make connections with the future, contemplating rising waters and flooding risks in the Netherlands.
The element of time has its roots in Ronald's landscape architecture background. ‘Landscape architecture teaches you to think in time, scale and processes. The surroundings in which you work are dynamic; they change over time. Placing yourself in the present, while connecting it to the past and the future – that's very much part of the nature of that discipline. I took that with me into the world of art, so to speak. If I didn't have those skills, I couldn’t have made these works.’
The poetry of absence
These historical and conceptual meanings are accentuated by the acts of adding and removing. This is what RAAAF calls ‘the poetry of absence’. It creates a constant field of tension between minimalism, the grand size, and the significant history of the works.
This tension between adding and removing is what you call “the maximum minimum”. We see it with Deltawerk //, where you removed and dug out the installation to a depth of seven meters. At the same time, you filled this up again with water.
‘We removed quite some elements with Deltawerk //, including construction halls and large machines. Keeping these on site would lead to historic storytelling, disrupting your imagination. These are all difficult choices made from the idea of the poetry of absence. With the maximum minimum, you try to get to the essence. The idea is not that nothing should be added, but as little as possible.’
The water around the construction is a newly added element.
‘Yes, in that way, we wanted to create a drowned ruin, reflected in a water mirror. What does it mean if the Netherlands ends up underwater and we’re left with many more ruins? The work doesn’t provide an answer, but it explores, while slowly overgrown by nature, due to the concrete surface we sandblasted. When in a hundred years thousands of homes are submerged, they’ll become substrate too and overgrown with plants.
You can safely add something like the lake, as long as it contributes to that maximum minimum. For instance, with our art installation Black Water, we added water to amplify that dripping echo in the space.’
Bunker 599 was a project you did with Atelier de Lyon. Here, you decided to split the bunker in half, removing the middle part, resulting in a corridor.
‘The cut-through bunker is our most extreme example of maximum minimum; it is a liberating experience when you walk through it.
After finalising the work, the construction was added to the UNESCO World Heritage site Dutch Water Defence Lines. This is the paradox that we try to illuminate as well: the idea that sometimes you have to cut through something to understand its meaning – that’s a new way of thinking about heritage, and it’s liberating as well. If you cut through a bunker once, you mentally cut through them everywhere. You see? That’s what art can do. This specific practice is what we call “hardcore heritage”: a new way of thinking about monuments by well-considered destruction and radical changes in the contexts, such as seemingly contradictory additions.’
When do you add something, and when do you remove something?
‘That really depends on the location. Why did we add a landscape of fire with Fireman? Like Vacant NL, we wanted to denounce the vacancy in the Netherlands. Often, fire safety is the reason for buildings to stay empty. We wanted to emphasise that by increasing the risk instead of lowering it. So we put the empty Eiffel building in Maastricht on fire with hundreds of burning fire barrels. It was fucking hot inside.’
The poetry of absence
These historical and conceptual meanings are accentuated by the acts of adding and removing. This is what RAAAF calls ‘the poetry of absence’. It creates a constant field of tension between minimalism, the grand size, and the significant history of the works.
This tension between adding and removing is what you call “the maximum minimum”. We see it with Deltawerk //, where you removed and dug out the installation to a depth of seven meters. At the same time, you filled this up again with water.
‘We removed quite some elements with Deltawerk //, including construction halls and large machines. Keeping these on site would lead to historic storytelling, disrupting your imagination. These are all difficult choices made from the idea of the poetry of absence. With the maximum minimum, you try to get to the essence. The idea is not that nothing should be added, but as little as possible.’
The water around the construction is a newly added element.
‘Yes, in that way, we wanted to create a drowned ruin, reflected in a water mirror. What does it mean if the Netherlands ends up underwater and we’re left with many more ruins? The work doesn’t provide an answer, but it explores, while slowly overgrown by nature, due to the concrete surface we sandblasted. When in a hundred years thousands of homes are submerged, they’ll become substrate too and overgrown with plants.
You can safely add something like the lake, as long as it contributes to that maximum minimum. For instance, with our art installation Black Water, we added water to amplify that dripping echo in the space.’
Bunker 599 was a project you did with Atelier de Lyon. Here, you decided to split the bunker in half, removing the middle part, resulting in a corridor.
‘The cut-through bunker is our most extreme example of maximum minimum; it is a liberating experience when you walk through it.
After finalising the work, the construction was added to the UNESCO World Heritage site Dutch Water Defence Lines. This is the paradox that we try to illuminate as well: the idea that sometimes you have to cut through something to understand its meaning – that’s a new way of thinking about heritage, and it’s liberating as well. If you cut through a bunker once, you mentally cut through them everywhere. You see? That’s what art can do. This specific practice is what we call “hardcore heritage”: a new way of thinking about monuments by well-considered destruction and radical changes in the contexts, such as seemingly contradictory additions.’
When do you add something, and when do you remove something?
‘That really depends on the location. Why did we add a landscape of fire with Fireman? Like Vacant NL, we wanted to denounce the vacancy in the Netherlands. Often, fire safety is the reason for buildings to stay empty. We wanted to emphasise that by increasing the risk instead of lowering it. So we put the empty Eiffel building in Maastricht on fire with hundreds of burning fire barrels. It was fucking hot inside.’
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The installation Firemen is what RAAAF calls “a total experience” – something that is reflected throughout their work. It’s done in a strange, minimalist way that is maximalist at the same time. The absence, the minimal, or a seemingly small twist reveals each space and every construction in full glory, with maximum impact. Those twists are rarely small, though. To highlight the emptiness of the silo of Black Water (2021), they added 20.000 m³ of water. With glycerine they created the loudest dropst possible that were accentuated by the echo of the silo’s. It was another total experience: visitors were invited in duos to hand in their phones and take in the pitch darkness and the vastness of the vacant space through a 20-minute submersion, left to their senses. ‘Some people came out crying, it was like healing therapy.’
'A bunker symbolises indestructibility – we want to cut straight through this idea'
Dismantling seeming indestructibility
An important message that is a constant thread throughout the oeuvre of RAAAF is the seeming indestructibility of constructions and underlying power relationships. Many of the buildings and sites RAAAF transform carry a loaded, dark history with them, often linked with times of war. One of the most striking examples is Luftschloss (collection Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam, 2021), a short film starring the 55m World War II construction of a Flak Tower, which was built by Hitler in 1942 to protect the city of Vienna. Dismantling these constructions of power, the video shows a worker stripping down one of the towers until its transparent steel carcass. ‘We wanted to turn the apparent indestructibility into air.’
It appears you're not hesitant to intervene in sites marked by troubling histories?
‘No, it has to be done. Everyone walks past and says nothing. You need to expose its vulnerability – I think that’s essential.
With Bunker 599, we also wanted to question a seemingly indestructible object by sawing it through, making it fragile and effectuating a liberating effect. At that time, the situation in Europe was different. In 2010, we were dealing with a seemingly safe situation. That was before the annexation of the Crimea in Ukraine and all the misery after. That safe situation was, of course, an illusion – the outside world has plenty of conflict zones.
This specific bunker was part of the Dutch Water Defence Lines. It symbolises indestructibility – we want to cut straight through this idea.’
Why is it important for you to expose these vulnerabilities and dismantle power relationships?
'Often, radical ideas or loaded constructions are built with the heaviest materials, such as concrete and steel. These create the illusion of indestructibility. Deltaworks were created to establish an ‘indestructible Holland’, but sea levels are still rising. Luftschloss, which means “air castle”, was meant to become a symbol of a victorious Third Reich, which thankfully never came into being. That was another illusion of indestructibility. In the end, everything proves to be fluid.'
How does the future play a role when developing your works? You can’t really predict the future, of course, but it affects your pieces.
‘You can’t. With Still Life, we used the brass of bullets from a NATO factory where 50 million bullets were made. These still roam the world, and they are still used to kill people. What we wanted to do was to make this threat tangible. That was before the war with Russia started. Naturally, the threat was always there, so we try to be a canary in the coal mine. You often come across a still life in the arts, but in this factory, it's about life and death.’
The location of Secret Operation 610 from 2013 has a history of war as well.
‘Yes, that was at a former American NATO air base in Soesterberg. We were asked to create something to breathe new life into the site; the whole air base was empty back then. Instead of using only the hangar, we wanted to make something that would take over the full airbase, so we created a mobile sculpture that would make you think differently about the landscape and the surroundings.
This work is strongly related to our concept of “hardcore heritage”. It’s again a seemingly contradictory addition, altering the historical site of the air base. This was once the place where dozens of fighter jets were stationed. Instead, our construction of Secret Operation 610 is super slow, as are the hangar doors. It’s a reincarnation of an F-15 fighter jet and weaponry that stood there during the Cold War. It makes the presence of that military power tangible once again.’
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As we feel the tensions rise in Europe and the threat of war looming over us, the work of RAAAF becomes increasingly poignant. The bunker has been inactive for decades, while the airbase of Soesterberg closed its doors in 2008 and the ammunition factory from Still Life in 2003. The meaning of the bullets made in this factory has shifted, not only because ‘our’ bullets are currently being used in conflict zones around the world, but also because they are becoming increasingly relevant within the Netherlands.
As for Deltawerk //, looming climate disasters alter the essence of the work. Every broken climate pact or promise, every new heat record, and the recently exposed poor flood preparedness of ‘water-master’ the Netherlands, make Deltawerk // feel increasingly urgent. Meanwhile, mosses, ferns and lichen start overgrowing the grey concrete surfaces, and baby trees are sprouting from its cracks.
It makes you wonder: What does cultural heritage mean when these constructions become relevant again?
RAAAF’s upcoming work will also depict a future scenario of a seemingly resilient Netherlands. Doing nothing is a form of exerting power, RAAAF seems to suggest, with vacancy, floods, and the threat of war as its consequences. In response, RAAAF pushes back with maximum gestures to realise the minimal: dragging walls, cutting concrete, casting brass, and excavating constructions.
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