I’m opening a shop.
But not the kind where you can buy tote bags or art prints. No, this one is wetter. Stranger. And more urgent.

Introducing the Hoogwaterwinkel – the High Water Shop – a temporary installation / intervention / flood-aware fantasy located in Rotterdam, at Josephstraat 164, throughout August 2025. We’re open Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00–18:00. Come in, the water’s rising.

The Hoogwaterwinkel is part of my ongoing art/research project NulNAP – the non-coastline of the Netherlands. It traces the imaginary shoreline that would exist if we removed our dikes – a speculative sea-level zero that runs like a quiet scar across the country. I’ve been walking this line for nearly a year now, collecting stories, sounds, waterlines, silences. The Hoogwaterwinkel brings all of that indoors.

So what is this shop, really?

It’s a place where art meets data meets conversation.
A space to reflect, not consume.
To ask: what does it mean to live below sea level, and keep pretending that’s normal?

Inside you’ll find:
– a collection of submerged futures (maps, photos, whispered warnings)
– readings on climate grief and infrastructural denial
– emergency boots and absurd rituals
– and yes: a donation box for the imaginary-but-disturbingly-plausible “North Sea Dike”, a mega-dam from Scotland to Norway, designed to keep Europe dry.

The image accompanying this post gives you a taste. Look closely: the houses are still dry, floating just above. But the people – or their umbrellas, at least – are underwater. It’s a submerged gaze, looking upward at privilege, inertia, illusion. A society watching its own rooftops from below, wondering who forgot to build the stairs.

Rotterdam is a fitting host. It is the frontline – below sea level, behind barriers, ahead of the curve in denial. The Hoogwaterwinkel doesn’t sell solutions. It offers questions. And some mildly soggy answers.

If you’re in the Netherlands this August, drop by.
Wear shoes you don’t mind getting metaphorically wet.

Josephstraat 164, 3014 TX Rotterdam

August 2025 – Wed to Sun, 10.00–18.00

Follow the project at the NulNAP site
And on Instagram, where the flood is always just a scroll away.