Pleasant Island

Nauru is a small island-state in the Pacific. Once it was called ‘Pleasant Island’ by British whalers. The history of this island can be read as a parable of our modern age. After the discovery of a vast reserve of phosphate in its soil, the island became one of the world’s richest countries. Each plot of land, each garden, each corner of the island was dug up and mined – until nothing remained and all its natural resources had been depleted. In their second show, Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere travel to this place, which, groaning under a longing for growth, has been completely stripped of its resources and dug up until literally nothing remained. The island is now one of the world’s poorest countries, and so, in order to be able to survive, it now receives refugees from Australia in exchange for a substantial compensation. What future remains after such ecological and economic ruin?