Maas Lab was born out of a shared curiosity about how an actual partnership with the Maas - a more-than-human entity - can change our human way of looking at entities and organisations in general. Maas Lab is a nomadic laboratory that is physically connected to the Maas, where the research primarily takes place in, on, or along the Maas. The experiential and embodied interaction with the Maas is at the heart of Maas Lab.
Maas Lab organises the Maaswacht, Multispecies Gatherings, and residencies for artists related to SoAP and TAAT.
In the end of 2024, I was commissioned by SoAP and TAAT to design a book made from visual archives of the maas lab. A maas book. I stayed with the maas for a residency in situ collecting traces from past residents, curating images from the previous year and setting up a blueprint of the book. This analog process evolved at the rhythm of my small printer that I brought by the river with me, as I was selecting, printing and laying out snippets of the maas lab. The pixels got washed out through a mix of ink and water, onto paper, conferring a certain harmony and atmosphere to the book. A handwritten narration guides us through the river flows.
a maas book was launched in Maastricht in June 2025, in collaboration with Limestone Bookshop. The book was used as a vessel to talk about the river and to freeze our dreams into maas water.
the five last images show the project Frozen Flow by Nick Steur