Interview Series: [F]luisteren with Kleefstra & Kleefstra (It Deel)
The Frisian landscape has inspired countless artists through the centuries: from Jan Mankes to Christiaan Kuitwaard and Willem van Althuis. Their work can be admired at Museum Belvédère in Oranjewoud – the place where we meet with brothers Jan and Romke Kleefstra. They are the driving forces behind It Deel, a musical project that will perform at Fluister on Sunday afternoon, November 16.
With ‘It Deel’, the brothers invite like-minded musicians to retreat into the Frisian landscape for inspiration. Jacaszek, Karen Willems, Eivind Lonning, and Espen Reinertsen were earlier invited for a residency.
For Deel IV, the concluding chapter of the series, they enlisted Portuguese cellist Joana Guerra, a long-time collaborator from the Alvaret Ensemble, along with violinist Maria do Mar.
Fluister travelled ahead to ‘Oranjewoud’, the area near Heerenveen where this fourth part took root. Without expectation, almost as a blank slate, we decide to walk with the brothers through the landscape, to breathe, and to take in as much of nature as possible. Jan warns us beforehand: “Don’t expect a cheerful message.”
Romke(l) en Jan(r) Kleefstra on top of the Belvedere tower
The Frisian Landscape: Apparent emptiness, flatness and open Sky
From Dordrecht, the views on the way to Friesland seem hardly to change. No mountains, no sharp transitions. Everything flat. Upon arrival, the difference is subtle but tangible: the sky feels more spacious.
“In the seventies a Biennale was held here,” Jan tells me as we walk along a path beside the meadows. “The foreign artists all said the same thing: here, sky, water and land merge into a single horizon. That image has disappeared.”
Where once a rich variety of grasses grew – each with its own scent and color – now vast fields of maize and protein-rich grass dominate, destined for animal feed.
“The grass my father used to run his hand through, releasing all kinds of fragrances, is gone,” says Romke. “This grass hardly smells at all.” The new, protein-rich variety is ideal for livestock feed — and for the geese that now arrive in great flocks, grazing on what was meant for the cows. Farmers may complain, but the animals are simply following the logic of the landscape.
view from Woudsterweg
As we walk through the first stretch of forest, Jan points upward. “When I first came here, I was constantly surrounded by insects. Now we’ve been walking for a while and haven’t seen a single one.” Fewer insects mean fewer birds. Romke can confirm it with figures: he conducts bird counts in the area. “The numbers of migratory and breeding birds decline every year,” he says. “The balance is shifting.” “Agriculture uses fewer pesticides today, but the ones that remain are far more potent — and far more devastating to the natural balance. Traces of these chemicals have now been detected in the Wadden Sea, the vast tidal region and UNESCO World Heritage site. Meanwhile, insect populations are vanishing at an alarming rate.”
According to the brothers, the root of the problem lies in how we organize agriculture. “Agriculture itself isn’t wrong,” says Romke, “but it must be in proportion to and in balance with the landscape. People and nature need to live together, because people are nature. Now we keep intervening – shooting geese and foxes – but that only creates new problems. It’s a vicious cycle.”
Forest at Oranjewoud
Art as Resistance
Jan’s concern for threatened nature resonates in everything he says. “Around the earth there is one great sphere of life – and we are part of it. Human and non-human alike. The pain we inflict on the earth, that’s what troubles me.”
That concern is also the heart of his book Boswerk, a collaboration with artist Christiaan Kuitwaard. Together they wandered through forests, painted, observed, and wrote. Out of that devotion to trees, birds, and soil grew a collection in which paintings and words complement each other.
Boswerk by Jan Kleefstra & Christiaan Kuitwaard
The theme of loss runs like a red thread through ‘Deel IV’. It was a natural choice to invite Joana Guerra. On her solo album Chão Vermelho she tells of the parched earth of her childhood in Portugal: soil that cracked under extreme drought, as if the earth had grown wrinkles – the scars of an exhausted civilization.
Meanwhile, the Netherlands is not spared its own scars. Staatsbosbeheer receives less financial support and is forced to sell commercial logging under the label of “natural management.” The forests are changing at great speed.
Musical Roots
While Romke Kleefstra initially found an outlet for his musical energy in local punk bands – first inspired by hardcore groups like Negazione and later by American noise bands like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. – his brother Jan at first held back. He became the bands’ driver, the quiet presence alongside the noise. Later, through poetry and nature, he found his own voice.
The two worlds came together after the turn of the century, when the boundaries shifted from noise rock to soundscapes and ambient. Romke creates a musical landscape on which Jan recites his poems in Frisian. Frisian was a natural choice for the brothers, born and raised (and still reside) in Friesland. During the walk, Jan admits that he now writes in Dutch and then translates the texts into Frisian.
Belvédère
Halfway through our walking route, we reach the renovated Belvédère Tower. Thanks to the clear weather, we can see far across the Frisian landscape from the viewing platforms. The brothers point out the directions of Steenwijk, Lemmer, and Heerenveen. Only the die-hard Cambuur fan, Romke, prefers to look a little further — past Heerenveen — toward Leeuwarden. Jan lives right between those two cities, in Akkrum. His brother not much farther away.
At the end of the route, we arrive at the modern museum that shares its name with the tower: Museum Belvédère. We wander among the tranquil paintings of Jan Mankes — the artist who once lived for a time in nearby, de Knipe, here in Oranjewoud.
Romke pauses in front of a canvas from 1912. “Do you recognize it?” he asks.
In the painting, we see a row of trees where land, water, and sky merge into a soft, endless horizon. It is the Woudsterweg — the road beside the museum, where our walk began, at the edge of the wide cornfield. Just as Mankes captured the landscape in 1912 with his gentle brushstrokes, the brothers now capture it in sound and words. They translate the changing Frisian landscape into soundscapes and poetry. On November 16, we’ll hear the result during Fluister.
Woudsterweg by Jan Mankes and Woudsterweg present day
It Deel IV
Part IV was recorded in the monumental Thomas Church of Katlijk, on the edge of Oranjewoud. In November, the result will be released on Moving Furniture, followed by performances – including a stop at Fluister in Dordrecht.
Article by Su-Young Kim & Wilbertjan Fluister
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