Unfortunately this video is not available on the Impakt Channel, but you can see an excerpt of it here. At dawn, four small ‘islands’ floating on a lake are moving slowly towards an indefinite other side. Music can be heard in the distance. Only after some time does it dawn on the viewer that surely, underneath these round roofs of foliage there has to be something that propels them. Heads? Slowly the thought emerges that these might be a small group of swimmers. But why in this way, and where to? Together with a number of other works, On The Lake is part of a larger project by Kooijmans – The Fish Pond Song – which among other things refers to a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Bosch’ Garden of Earthly Delight came about in a time of religious conflict in the Netherlands, between ‘believers’ and so-called ‘non-believers’, and comments on various Biblical motifs and profane matters. In the 21st century, we are experiencing our own variation on such clashes between convictions, small fallacies or extreme misconceptions. Belief, disbelief and superstition play a very important role in Kooijmans’ series. Not only does he – very serenely – represent their ambiguity, as in fairy tales and miracles, but also the ensuing inner conflict and the both misleading and trivial wars caused by them.