Beaver Punk

Beaver Punk is a video project that delves into the centuries-old relationship between humans and beavers. Once hunted for fur, meat, and Castoreum, the last indigenous beaver (Castor Fiber) became extinct in the Netherlands in 1826. To restore and rewild nature reserves, they were reintroduced in 1988. However, its increasing activities—damaging dykes, railways, and other human infrastructure—have sparked resistance. That led to more special permissions from authorities, meaning beavers can be disturbed, captured, or killed. In a densely populated country like the Netherlands, the boundaries between human and non-human habitats fade, revealing how we’ve forgotten to coexist. Through this lens, “Beaver Punk” reimagines a Neo-Holocene inhabited by post-human-beaver hybrids, using artifacts to mask and examine the complexities of this interspecies relationship.