Aqua-Boogie, GEM, The Hague

To reach “Aqua Boogie”, visitors descend a staircase that has a view across a large pond outside, conveying a feeling of being below groundwater level. This cellar has eversince it’s building in ’62, until the renovation in ’98 been troubled by water, groundwater rose through the floor while rainwater flooded in at a ramp. The visitors enter an irregular 220-square-metre cellar space, flooded with pitch-black water and criss-crossed with pine duckboards allowing the visitors to explore the aqueous biotope closely. It smells of water and pine, water that seems bottomless, and together with the dampened sounds it becomes a serene place. Almost meditative. Until the water surface suddenly moves somewhere, and after a while somewhere else. Beneath the surface 40 black leather carp practically invisible, go about unseen business.