(Re)animate is an extraordinary media art installation by the artist duo Driessens & Verstappen. In this three-part art project, historical insect collections from the Natural History Museum Maastricht and the Mission Museum in Steyl are given new forms, arrangements, and meanings.
This autumn, three-meter-tall blank billboards will stand in the Stadspark in Maastricht. After sunset, these advertising boards transform into projection surfaces, displaying enchanting video artworks that invite viewers to look differently, for longer, and in greater detail, as if ‘zoomed in’ at remarkable insects from two museum collections in the Limburg region.
For (Re)animate, artists Driessens & Verstappen photographed over 4,000 specimens — including endangered or, in the Netherlands, extinct butterflies, climate-sensitive dragonflies, and exotic beetles — from the collections of the Natural History Museum Maastricht (NHMM) and the Mission Museum in Steyl. At the invitation of Viewmaster Projects, they created three video artworks that bring these two entomological collections back to life.
Collections containing countless insects, pinned long ago into drawers and display cases, serve as a rich resource through which the artists make the current insect crisis visible and tangible. Insects are going extinct far more rapidly than other animals; in just a few decades, their biomass has declined by three-quarters. Simultaneously, the number of non-native (exotic) species in the Netherlands is on the rise, bringing with it a range of consequences. Through their artistic vision, Driessens & Verstappen capture the core themes of the insect crisis, the loss of biodiversity, global warming, and the arrival of non-native species, in three striking video artworks. For each part of this triptych, the artists developed their own energy-efficient AI tools, which transform these old, analog heritage collections into new forms, arrangements, and meanings.
This makes (Re)animate an extraordinary time-based media triptych with a unique visual language, where recognition and abstraction converge. An evening stroll through the city park will lead you past projections that cast a grand light on the wondrous world of tiny insects.
(Re)animate can be visited free of charge from October 15 to November 15 in the Maastricht City Park (Stadspark), near the Tapijn site and the Jeker river. It is on display every evening from sunset until 11:00 PM. More info: viewmaster-projects.com
(Re)-animate is a traveling art project. From February 26 to March 29, 2027, the three projections will be on display in the monastery garden of the Mission Museum in Steyl.
Photography: Willemijn Doelman
