Movement 
Can Be Heard

An Approach to Hans-Jürgen Poëtz’s Soundscapes in the District of Steinfurt 

There is no fixed boundary between town and countryside. It is a space in constant transformation, shaped by movements, transitions and connections. In the district of Steinfurt, this permeability becomes both visible and audible. Rural structures, transport routes, settlement edges and urban concentrations overlap here. What may appear at first glance to be a stable landscape reveals itself, upon closer inspection – and listening – as a system of continual dynamism.

Even on remote paths, the noise of traffic remains present: a constant drone inscribed into the landscape. Roads, motorways and railway lines do not merely connect places; they also create pathways for unintended fellow travellers. Seeds cling to tyres, clothing and vehicles, are carried along by the airflow, scattered, and take root anew. Along these transport arteries, inconspicuous biotopes of gravel, dust and asphalt emerge – habitats for plants that know how to deal with speed. They populate those zones where nature and grey infrastructure meet, making visible how profoundly landscape is shaped by movement.

These are the places that interest me as an artist. Not as pure natural spaces, but as traces of human and vegetal agency. They are in-between spaces – barely noticed, unstable, neither town nor countryside. A form of no-man’s-land shaped by use, interruption and chance. I am fascinated by what grows in the places we merely pass by: at the edges, in the transitions, in the shadow of infrastructure. Here, plants exist that do not shy away from uncertainty and instability. Many of them are considered invasive or non-native. At the margins they manage to survive, where others must retreat. They speak of mobility, adaptation, and of a landscape that is constantly reinventing itself.

In the work of Hans-Jürgen Poëtz, who explores the acoustic spaces of the district of Steinfurt, the dynamism of the landscape becomes perceptible on both acoustic and visual levels. His works capture not just individual sounds but the entirety of acoustic layers: the roar of the A30, the flow of the River Ems, the hum of machinery, the rhythm of craftsmanship, or the voices of everyday life. He links sounds and moving images from different contexts, creating a multi-layered, associative portrait of a district and its landscape.

Poëtz listens to the transitions and subtleties between nature and infrastructure, between rural quiet and urban presence. In doing so, something becomes particularly tangible: the constant movement, the overlapping and merging of sounds and images that – like seeds – spread along the routes.

Poëtz shows that sound knows no boundaries. It permeates fields, villages, buildings and roadside verges alike, reflecting both environment and human activity. His acoustic-visual observations make clear that landscape is not only made up of visible forms but is a dynamic network of interaction and transit. My own movement between town and countryside shapes the way I perceive this. Between the urban density of the Rhineland and the open landscape of the district of Steinfurt, I search for a place to arrive, fully aware that movement has long become part of my artistic practice. The longer I spend here, the clearer it becomes: the countryside is not the opposite of the city, but its continuation by other means. Nothing here is still, either. The noises are different, yet they carry the same restlessness: engines, machines, wind turbines and motorways. Perhaps it is precisely this oscillation between dynamism and stillness that characterises today’s landscape.

I am interested in how plants respond to these conditions, how they spread along human infrastructure. How they occupy spaces that are themselves in flux, and how we perceive and evaluate these processes. Invasive species, migrant plants or pioneers are part of an ecological narrative that speaks of mobility. They do not follow the boundaries we draw. They seize opportunities and transform pathways into habitats.

The district of Steinfurt provides a particular stage for this: a region between metropolitan area and open countryside, between traces of industrial history and agricultural character, crossed by transport routes, rivers, canals and fields. This mixture of movement and persistence appears not only in the landscape itself but also in how we perceive it.

My artistic research is situated within these inconspicuous processes. It is a practice of collecting, observing and translating between ecological and cultural movements. Like Hans-Jürgen Poëtz, who explores the acoustic DNA of the district of Steinfurt, I, too, focus on the network of relationships within a larger whole – between nature and culture, chance and control, growth and loss.

Our works approach these transitions and interconnections from different perspectives, yet with a shared sensitivity for what shapes our relationship to the world. The boundaries between them remain fluid. Perhaps landscape can only be understood if we do not regard it as a fixed space but as a condition of movement. As a continuous in-between, in which everything encounters, transforms and reshapes itself.

Katharina Veerkamp, born in Mettingen (district of Steinfurt), is an interdisciplinary artist. She explores the global movement of plants and its impact on both natural and cultural landscapes. She investigates how plants leave their original ecosystems through human intervention or chance, enter new environments and are reinterpreted there – sometimes as so-called invasive non-native species. In her work, she combines artistic and scientific perspectives, opening up questions of belonging, otherness and adaptation.