“A river is a river is a river…”

Since 2015, the Polish artist collective FLOW has been sailing the Vistula. The European Pavilion 2024 – Liquid Becomings curators, multimedia artists Agnieszka Brzezanska  and Ewa Ciepielewska are among the pioneers of this collective. They have been ‘coming to the river’ for years, initially with little interest from other artists, but increasingly finding themselves in a new ‘mainstream’.

Flow partakes in the cultural resurgence in Poland of ‘being on the rivers’, linking to time old traditions of traveling over water. “Being on the river is revitalising. It regains the appreciation for the river and spending time on it… Being on the water is a way to become familiar with places in Poland that one would otherwise never have known.”

Grassroots movements engage, originating in people, historians, or in public tour services, for shorter or longer trips on the water. The river revival has helped to recreate new jobs, and restore jobs that had previously disappeared. It also has had strong educational dimensions.

Being asked to configure the Vistula journey for Liquid Becomings in 2024 was quite an adventure for Flow. Their prior experiences really helped shape the larger story. “The consciousness that we were now part of coming together with crews on different rivers…. That was really  beautiful …To see that so many people are starting to think this way and take to the rivers.”

We spoke with Ewa and Agnieszka shortly after their return from their Liquid Becomings journey, a trip this time interrupted by days of exceptionally heavy rains and flooding. What makes these Vistula journeys so special? And what were the most important water stories they liked to recount this time?  Five observations stood out, all circling around notions of immersion and rewilding as vital necessities for our collective futures.

1. Resetting the basic relationship: accommodating, not extractive. “We feel very strongly about how on the river, the river carries you. For you are not in a stable ground. For many people, this is a new feeling. Some people are very anxious about that. But we are not there to change the river, but to accommodate to it. This basic awareness is important for us. It informs our language. Humans usually tend to capitalise things, including the river. We are against such extractivist perception and language. We have always appreciated that the Vistula river was left in a large part as it was before.”

2. Immersion in nature as basic human need, reforming our sense of human agency. “Going back to our ancestors, we find people much more immersed in nature than now. We need to regain that consciousness. It’s a physiological need. We have grown too separated from nature. It closes our hearts, it makes us feel separated, even from ourselves. Religious upbringing and false ideas of civilisations do not help, notably when ‘others’ (such as old nomads or indigenous populations) are considered uncivilised. The separation from nature brings suffering in the world.  And loneliness. When we see ‘wilderness’ in its own right, it challenges our basic assumptions of ‘human agency’. In our journeys, we experience anew that it is possible to connect with nature. That that sense stays with you, in whatever comes next.”

3. The challenge to deal with the unexpected.  “During the Liquid Becomings trip, we experienced the rise on the Vistula due to the flooding in another river. We therefore had to stay longer in one place. And had to deal with heavier currents, and the debris that came out of the flooding. What was tricky was not so much the rise of the waters, but their fall. We almost got stuck, and needed a rescue team to be able to move back to the river. The sense of coming together was actually great: we found ourselves in emergency mode, with the need to act fast and really together. It could have been a drama. But  in the end nothing serious really happened. Being outside our comfort zones, however, was telling. If we don’t experience such challenges, we can only fantasize about them. By being in the thick of things, real changes come about.”

4. Rewilding: a dialogue between worlds. “Very often when we come back from the river, the words of our city-lives seem crazy. They do not make sense. It is a sort of hallucination. This contrast is very tangible. Reconnecting with what we call ‘nature’ is a human need. We need to get out of the urban trance states that are aggravating the lives of all of us, and reconnect with what is alive and free, with the beauty of life in all its fullness. That happens in forests, sea, parks, actually in any place where we can walk, spend real time, look around us consciously. Life is everywhere. In places sometimes that are left alone. Warsaw became an oasis for wildlife, surrounded by agriculture which is damaging the natural world so deeply. Rewilding can happen in the incredible immersion in a broader natural surroundings, beyond mere human togetherness. Sensing it changes you forever.  Everybody from the crew came back much healthier. “

5. Slowing down…“This was everybody’s call…”

Text created from the conversation between Liquid Becomings Polish Vistula Curators, Agnieszka Brzezanska and Ewa Ciepielewska, with Godelive van Heteren, Agora’s board member, and Ana Paula Teixeira, part of Agora’s team.

*This text is part of ‘Notes from the river’, a series of reflections from people that are taking part in, are connected to or are very sympathetic to the European Pavilion 2024: Liquid Becomings and the discussions being posed by the project. Each text expresses the personal ideas and positioning of the authors.

The Danube is many things at once. During our two-week journey on the M.S. Fusion, we cross the following borders: Hungary/Serbia, Serbia/Croatia, Croatia/Serbia. The stamps on our passports are black and white, neat Cyrillic rectangles. Enter/exit.

But the reality of those crossings is much more ambiguous. The Liquid Becomings crew – five artists, two curators, one captain – officially departs Hungary at the port border crossing in Mohács, ten kilometres before crossing the map-drawn border line into Serbia, and hours before we get our passports stamped upon arrival in Apatin, floating in the ambiguous space of this international waterway. In the final days of our trip, in an emergency situation due to high winds and a failing motor, we dock on Romanian soil without technically entering Romania (though with plenty of paperwork).

On the Danube, the deeply theoretical and imaginary nature of these borders is all around you: there is nothing to see but water and shore. The late-summer heatwave sun beats down everywhere equally. Even the shipping channel wanders back and forth, closer to one body of land or the other. Traffic and border police boats go more or less where they want to. There’s no barbed wire here, no watchtowers, which doesn’t mean these borders aren’t closely patrolled, or dangerous.

Three men from Congo were found dead near the Kupa river in Severin na Kupi, in Croatia. A twenty-year-old man from Afghanistan was shot in a rubber boat by Croatian police as he was attempting to cross the Sava from the Bosnian side. A ten-year-old girl from Turkey drowned after falling from her mother’s shoulders while crossing the Dragonja river from Croatia to Slovenia. Six people, including two children, drowned after their boat capsized in the Danube at Karabukovo while trying to cross from Serbia into Croatia. Four are still missing.

All across the Balkans, river borders just like this one are claiming lives. Almost a year ago, I first came across the UNITED List of Refugee Deaths, and started to understand just how deadly these external EU borders are for people on the move: not just the Mediterranean, not just the forests and the roads, but the rivers, too. Malse, Morava, Rezovo, Dobra, Reka, Isonzo, Vukovci, Danube, Tisza, Drina, Glina, Nisava, Una, Korana, Dragonja, Maritsa, Mrežnica, Kupa, Evros, Sava: for many, these beautiful names of rivers across the Balkans spell nothing but death.

Once you read the stories – a single, truncated glimpse into the end of these journeys, these lives – it’s impossible to look away. I started researching the question during a four-month residency in Belgrade at the start of this year, conducting interviews with activists, academics and government workers, speaking to NGOs, and simply spending time in these fluid spaces, trying to parse their ambiguity, trying to understand how they work.

The journey this September with Liquid Becomings was another way of coming into direct contact with the Danube, one of the major river borders into Europe: a contested border in several places, a waterway that meanders from the heart of the EU to its furthest margins. History is deeply layered here, from the deepest layers of Pleistocene sand to traces of iron oxide from Neolithic pottery. Right-wing graffiti on plaster over shrapnel marks. Empty water bottles in the river mud.

The Danube, too, is a conflicted and contradictory space, full of industrial machinery and wild islands, a junkyard and an ecosystem all at once. On its edges, sharp loess cliffs and endless green flatlands. I’m interested in the intersections between these layers and how they shape the region as a liminal space on the edge of the EU. After all, border rivers are no more dangerous than any other body of water. It is our own philosophies and technologies of bordering, our exclusionary and racist migration policies, our blind eye turned to abuses of power that are killing people.

At the end of the journey, back on dry land, the work is not done. I am still actively collecting testimonies from people who have made the crossing. Sorting through my field recordings. Writing up. From time to time I still feel the lilt of the river beneath my feet. Bright and murky waters.

Text by Elodie Olson-Coons, writer and artists working with text, part of the Danube crew of Liquid Becomings – Pavilion 2024

*This text is part of Notes from the rivers, a series of reflections from people that are taking part in, are connected to or are very sympathetic to the European Pavilion 2024: Liquid Becomings and the discussions being posed by the project. Each text expresses the personal ideas and positioning of the authors.

‘Public Spaces’ is a perpetual feel-good word, certainly in progressive circles. In broad strokes, ‘public spaces’ pertain to the territories and spaces – physically, metaphorically – which should belong to us all. Intellectually and practically, conversations around public spaces invite us to reflect about our ‘common ground’ or ‘common goods’, and ‘commonality’. During chaotic foundational times such as we live again today, conversations about public spaces often abound. To articulate what constitutes our renewed ‘commonality’ is a core question in times of deeper change.

We spoke about today’s struggles around public spaces with Marleen Stikker, director of de Waag, Futurelab for Technology and Society in Amsterdam. Marleen is very active in PublicSpaces, a coalition of public organizations from public broadcasters, heritage institutions, festivals, libraries, museums and education, which work together to find creative solutions to a major shared concern: how to deal with today’s world dependence on big tech shaping our public sphere?

Many recent publications address shifts in configuration of our public space caused by the arrival of the internet and later social media. Marleen Stikker has been immersed in many of these issues since the 1990s, which she related in vivid detail in her 2019 book: Het internet is stuk. Maar we kunnen het repareren (The Internet is broken, but we can repair it).

The text below brings together some of the many interesting points that Marleen Stikker shared for the Liquid Becomings blog Notes from the river.

“The arrival of the internet back in the 1980s as a facilitator of new public space felt like a ‘greenfield’. Early adapters at the time included hosts of creative people, designers, people in social movements, hackers. They loved technology as man-made, explorative, creative. They saw the emerging technologies and the internet as a new public space in which people could actively and more democratically engage. One manifestation was the Digital City, which we launched in 1994. It was conceived at the time as a public space for citizens and organizations to collaborate. It was there not merely to ‘consume’ things, but to be an active part of developments. People loved it: you could surf the internet, meet people, have discussions, contribute. People immediately saw its potential to connect in new ways.
I was personally interested in the Tcp IP protocol and what it signified: moving to distributive instead of centralized networks…It was a hugely creative time, with many movements springing up: you had PeaceNets, HealthNets, HIV Nets etc., often expanding into larger and larger networks. But already then, you had some divergence between people at the frontlines. Some were totally fascinated by the technology per se, thrilled by the technological potentials, such as many in the Silicon Valley crowd. The European movement was different. Some of us argued even in those early days that the technology, however exciting, was not neutral. We saw that many old questions about power, about who owns the figurations, who writes the protocols, who is in control, were immediately present as well. I think we were not simply optimists, we were realists.

Then in the 1990s, while all kinds of digital options were being explored, the larger political economy of the times kicked in. Politics moved to neoliberal agendas. Notably after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the tone was: capitalism has won the day, the ‘market’ can now do everything. Many of the previously taken-for-granted public services, such as energy, water, health, education, transportation, were transferred to the private sector, not always with public safeguards against the dominant ethos of shareholder-value-first. In the process, the internet itself became pervaded as well. From a ‘greenfield’ in which a lot could be freely explored and codesigned, it turned into a brownfield. I feel sorry for many young people today who now find the internet the way it is and have to carve out new paths to public spaces.

In this climate, we have to mobilize time and again, to articulate the vital need for public space and societal ownership over parts of the technologies and the Internet. Until today. We hammer on the need for transparency and open protocols, on interoperability. We try to salvage the idea that the internet has many potentials to be a public space, with alternative ways to be ruled and organized, and moderated by societal actors.

We use the slogan ‘Taking Back the Internet’. We link to the global discussions about sovereignty and strategic autonomy. We develop practical ways out of the deep dilemmas which organizations today face, such as feeling forced to stay on certain social media they do not necessarily like. We push back on many fronts on the capture of the internet, to create openness and transparency. There are many tools emerging. There are legislative initiatives. We feel there is now an opportunity for companies to launch technologies that have privacy by design, are distributive and interoperable by nature. Some companies do. We feel that that is the future. It is hard work. But with clarity you can change the markets. And legislation can definitely help. We now have Next Cloud, Fediverse. So tools for change are there. We should do things together, it is possible. We can. And yes: we should collectivize!”

Text created from the conversation between Marleen Stikker and Godelieve van Heteren, espaço agora now board member.

Like many of you – thank you for your concern – we here at the European Cultural Foundation headquarters were fearing that the extreme weather conditions causing floods in Central and Eastern Europe would also be affecting The European Pavilion 2024: Liquid Becomings crew journeying the Vistula.

Luckily their journey was not affected by the floods happening elsewhere in the region. When asked for comments the Vistula crew shared the following message with us:

“We are deeply saddened to see the losses and damages caused by the flooding in Lower Silesia. The catastrophe asks for a closer look into the reasons behind it: deforestation, regulation of mountain rivers and extermination of beavers. Therefore, we call for re-naturalisation of Polish rivers. If you want to help the victims of flooding in Poland, visit the website of the Polish Red Cross” via the link below:

As part of The European Pavilion 2024: Liquid Becomings, when creative journeys take place aboard a boat, unique and challenging layers are added to the experience of participating in an artistic residency. Here’s a glimpse into what it looks like to live and create art while on board, in a text based on MS Fusion passenger information by Rainer Prohaska and Hanna Priemetzhofer.

The text is divided in short chapters entitled ‘Depending on nature’, ‘Group Dynamics and Shared Space’, ‘Time: A Slower Rhythm’, ‘Docking: Diverse Infrastructure’, ‘Hygiene: Simple and Basic’ and ‘Food and Water: Shared Responsibility’.

You can read the complete blog via

The third podcast by Donald Hyslop at Resonance FM, who supports The European Pavilion 2024: Liquid Becomings with a series of programmes, has just been published. Resonance FM follows the participants as they traverse the rivers of Europe.

The episode ‘Of boats and borders’ features in conversation with Ewa Ciepielewska, Rainer Prohaska and Hanna Priemetzhofer, venturing into their background, the rich heritage and tradition which inspire their works, and it is a fascinating glimpse into the unique vessels, the boats MS Fusion and FLOW, which form the core of Liquid Becomings. This podcast series is a production of Resonance FM being developed by Donald Hyslop. The official soundtrack is by Marija Balubdžić, and entitled Umbra – Motility.

You can find all Liquid Becomings podcasts via the link below.

There is a strong poetic in ‘departures’. Departures link with ‘orginations’ in the many senses of that word. ‘Points of departure’, for instance, suggest places (physical or not) from which people, things, trains of thought spring up, and start to move. Departures are the commencement of something. They are the moments in which a past (of necessity, desire, planning) meets a potential future (of objectives, destinations, goals). Something is about to begin….

This week saw two Liquid Becomings departures. After months of anticipation, preparation and first imagination, on August 27, we saw the departure of the MS Fusion, from Baja (southern Hungary). On board: a crew excited to discover and interact with the stories and histories of the Danube. A few days later, on 31 August, the boat FLOW left the banks of the Vistula in Warsaw, to engage once more in a ritual – already well established – between this vessel and the river. Only this time, the journey forms part of a larger context, and is woven into a wider ecosystem.

Departures as such are often overlooked. Many people tend to focus on the journey itself as the centerpiece of the altar. But it is worth pausing for a moment at the beauty and bittersweet potentials that characterize the very moments of departure, the official kickoff points of any story or travel.

Of course, while simple stories tend to follow the storylines of beginning, middle and end, in real life, most beginnings themselves embody ‘anteriors’. The background stories that push people into departure mode are manifold. The act of departing can spring from love, pain or tragedy, from restlessness, or the dire necessity to escape a situation or save one’s skin. It can stem from a strong aspiration to move yonder, towards something that you will not find if you are stuck in inertia. Social inequalities, different geographies, class are only some of the ‘anterior factors’ that can significantly impact how a story or journey will commence and under what cloud or stars people ‘depart’. Not every departure is a choice. But every departure implies a certain space of change.

To depart also frequently means to leave something behind: family, friends, a city, a culture. Departures force us – in however small a way – to let go of the familiar.

And that is something that humans tend to struggle with. Most people would not risk the unknown, if they did not have some sort of expectation for something better to emerge. Departures connote implicit dreams that in people’s minds surpass the challenges.

The fascination of each departure thus lies in the possible futures that they anticipate. They are a sort of metaphorical seed. Like seeds, departures do not come with absolute certainties, but with some justified hope. If you plant an apple seed, you aim to work to get an apple tree. You can do your best to support the tree to grow. But you cannot know beforehand the exact size and final shape of that tree. You cannot be sure if any of it will eventually materialize. But you act out of hope: watering the seedling, maintaining the soil accordingly and being committed to that invisible intention, planted in the ground. Indeed, much of the process will depend on conditions beyond your control.

It is in similar ways that departures invite acts of hope. The acts of hope, commitment and patience of planting a tree can teach us many lessons. The main one being that, besides not expecting pears when you planted apples, you can predict very little from what will come. So before enjoying the ride, give the departure moment the proper attention it deserves. Cherish the moment, as that very liminal present in which past and future collide, the one bringing you there, the other pushing you forward.

Dwell on that moment of departure for a second and feel it. For it may be in the departure that the dreams are actually most alive. And it might be that feeling that can guide you to sail on.

Text by Ana Paula Teixeira, agora team member, and Godelieve van Heteren, agora board member

*This is the first text from ‘Navigation Diaries’, a series of reflections from people that are taking part in, are connected to or are very sympathetic to the European Pavilion 2024: Liquid Becomings and the discussions being posed by the project. Each text expresses the personal ideas and positioning of the authors.

** Originally published on:

Ever since I got involved with Espaço Agora Now and its European Pavilion project Liquid Becomings, the word ‘Confluence’ has taken on much deeper, vital significance.

For sure, I liked that word before. ‘Confluence’ connotes soft, more organic ways of coming together, of emerging and merging: without authoritative delineation or monolithic purpose. The confluences of rivers, for instance, are these magical points where water meets water and ‘something joint’ emerges afterwards, that remains dynamic and flows on…

Early July, barely a week after the Belgrade festive launch of Liquid Becomings at which the names of the participating artists and routes on four rivers were announced, I found myself coincidentally in the Serbian capital to meet up with old friends. And happened to be one late afternoon on a boat at the ‘confluence’ of the Sava and Danube rivers – as it later appeared: the very same boat at which the Liquid Becomings formal launch had taken place just six days earlier.

It was one of these slightly scruffy traditional boats which takes visitors around the city a few times a day. Chatting with the young boatsman, whom I had asked as ‘river regular’ whether he had heard about the special launch-event, I saw the same enthusiasm and vital energy that I have noticed for months now when talking with people across Europe about the core spirit of Liquid Becomings.

“Yes, I was there for the launch,” the young skipper told me. “This is such a fantastic project. For rivers connect, rivers are never dull, rivers are our lifeblood, they talk to us, they weave us together, they cross borders, they always find ways to flow on.” He signaled how he had already been working on many rivers across Europe, but “would love to be on the Vistula”, one of the Liquid Becomings rivers, which he had never sailed himself.

Other people on the boat that afternoon started to join in: a woman who was a publisher of historical works on the region, somebody who had come from Hungary but had lived in Serbia for a long time and was interested in urban innovation. So, while we drifted slowly down the water, a range of exchanges emerged: about the concrete constructions, buildings, barges and bridges which we passed along the way, about the old and the new faces of Belgrade, about the timeless and the ephemeral character of Europe’s major cities, opening up some of the – often subliminal – stories which only tend to surface in dialogues between people who find space for some degree of respect and trust.

Having spent my own youth at the other side of Europe, I have always been fascinated by interpretations in other parts of the continent that would challenge my convictions or throw my prior views on different subjects. This old continent is riddled with such stories. It is a composite, a plurality of stories which continue to inform contemporary perspectives and challenge simplistic views of the world. At the same time, I have also been struck by how – as people from this continent – we do cherish this plurality, but struggle with it as well. The famous ‘unity in diversity’ that the European institutions love to advertise as Europe’s potential force for the good, has also emerged as the antithesis-slogan in the face of endless tales of brutality, turfwars, border disputes, painful crossings, the incessant negotiations, a desperate mantra for something better to come out of all the bloodshed.

Meanwhile: rivers flow through our unsettled lands and will continue to do so.

Our current times are once again very urgent. They are uncertain, but hence also dynamic. They stir a need for deeper exploration. In Liquid Becomings, we like to explore how the examinations with which the artists crews will engage during their four river journeys can be connected, in organic, fluid ways, with a wide range of civic experiences of so many people across the continent who in smaller and larger collectives are busy with similar challenges in a search of living better, more joyfully and honestly together.

We sense a huge potential for confluence.

We hope water will meet water, ‘something joint’ will emerge from such encounters and flow on….

Text by Godelieve van Heteren, our board member

“In the wholeheartedness of concentration, world and self begin to cohere. With that state comes an enlarging: of what may be known, what may be felt, what may be done.” Jane Hirschfield, Nine Gates

We sat down with Agnieszka Brzezanska and Ewa Ciepielewska, co-founders of FLOW and associate curators of Liquid Becomings, and curator Maria Kozlowska who will be sailing and curating the Vistula journey for The European Pavilion 2024: Liquid Becomings from 30 August until 30 September.

This week they created a prologue to FLOW 2024 first in Gdansk with a meeting at the Gdansk Shipyard. From there they travelled by boat to Elblag to open FLOW’s retrospective exhibition in partnership with Centrum Sztuki Galeria Elblag on 4 July. These are the first official events of The European Pavillion 2024 on the Vistula River.

For how long have you been sailing on the Vistula river together?

Aga + Ewa – Together we have been making the FLOW for 9 years, since 2016.

What was the original impetus?

Aga – We both had a very strong connection with rivers. We met, knowing about each other, shortly after Ewa invited me to an old type of boat that had been reconstructed, a type of boat that had disappeared from the rivers.  This became the first boat on which we sailed.

Do you remember what you did that first time?

Ewa – That first journey together on this traditional boat was in 2015, for a year before we started FLOW. The boat was called SOLNY – it was a type of the flat bottom wooden boat. This was a year when the Vistula river was invited as guest of honour on the Loire Festival in Orleans in France, which was a biennale of traditional boats from all over the world. I wanted to go there through the rivers and canals of Europe, from Poland – it’s about 3.000 kilometres approximately – with other artists. Aga and I went together to Berlin, where there were a few other female artists on the boat. Our mutual friend who had a Foundation Pamoja Razem said “you should make this together” and so we made something together. In those early years we made this happen by using the money from selling our art works.

One year later, July 2016, was the first FLOW journey.

Aga – We started collaborating with art institutions in the different cities along the river. The City Gallery of Gdansk was the first partner and we made a one-day event, theatre improvisations on kayaks, some concerts, and performances. In Warsaw, together with the Museum of Modern Art, we did a one-day performance where we invited many other boats and musicians and had lots of fresh fruit! Some of the people we worked with in those early years are now working in institutions. For example, our first curator from Pamoja is at Cricoteka – The Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor in Krakow. He, and they, will be part of the Liquid Becomings activity when we arrive in Krakow and do a floating pavilion in the city at the end of September.

What keeps pulling you to the rivers?

Ewa – the river is a completely other place–another planet–somewhere else entirely. There are no conditions that are like this. You can really cope and live with very simple means and undertake simple tasks to stay warm, to be prepared for rain, to wash in nature, to go to the toilet in nature, to behave properly in nature. This is the basis of living when we are on the boat.

Aga – For me, it is the quality of the space: being part of the earth and the cosmos and the immense sky and the fact that we are immersed in such a beautiful space together. This space makes the consciousness and mind work in a completely different way. All this luggage we accumulate falls away and real people emerge. In so much of our lives, people are mostly online, contacts are distant. When we are on the river there is no electricity, you can’t use the phone and devices as normal. This creates a quality of having enough time to spend together and the quality of relationship is unlike anything else. Conversations can develop over days, and it’s not even necessary to speak, you just do and follow and be together.

Ewa – The other thing that happens if I can describe it is that the physical borders merge, this liquid environment which is just going through us, dispersing us, infusing us–all of us–there is a physical feeling of being closer to each other and to the nature, to the trees, everything.

We hear you have a new boat for the FLOW sail in 2024, for Liquid Becomings.

Ewa – Yes we do. The boat is built in the same model as our old boat and with two masts, but this time it is from a Larch tree–which is really super good for the condition of water and earth. The constructor told us that it can survive for years. Originally we were going to use our old boat and renovate it. And then the boat builder was grumpy about repairing it, and then one day said: “I will make you a new boat for the costs of repairing the old one.” To rebuild and reconstruct is a big task and there was not much time. The new boat from this Larch tree is amazing.

You are sailing the boat from 28 June until 4 July from Gdansk to Elblag? Why? What will happen in Elblag?

Aga – Eblag is quite close to Gdansk, and yet it is in a region–Żuawy–with a canal that is connecting the Vistula river and through the river Nogat and then into Elblag. It is a very lovely situation.

The reason we are in Elblag is because together with Emilia Orzechowska and her team at Centrum Sztuki Galeria Elblag we have an exhibition, where we have invited artists who have been part of FLOW since we started to share their work. This is more than 100 artists, and 80 of them will exhibit. The gallery itself is an old gallery from the 60s, situated in the old church – just about the canals. We will arrive in Elblag on the canal and will almost reach the gallery by boat. It’s quite crazy!

Ewa – As well as the exhibition alongside the opening on 4 July we have planned some performances.

Maria is writing an anthem, a hymn/song, that she will sing live via old mobile phones present at the opening. https://mariamagdalena.bandcamp.com/track/rzeka-hymn

There will be a choir connected via a technology connection–this is also something connected to our intimate life these days and we will use it to connect with everyone on a private level. There will be a premiere of the Polish translation of Bodies of Water, which is illustrated with images from Aga’s textiles.  With this many artists, it will be a very rich experience.

What are you most looking forward to on the Vistula journey as part of Liquid Becomings?

Ewa – I want to see the river from a different perspective again, a new perspective, a new look. This time we will sail upstream and places will look different. There are people who know us and who know the boat, and they are happy we are coming. There will be a new crew on the boat, which always provides new perspectives. In Krakow, there is a big community of artists and creatives who are expecting our event and arrival. We will be in Krakow for several days as the final part and many things will happen.

Aga – For me, once I get on the rivers everything is perfect. I just wait to get on the boat.

Maria – I think this different temporality, of this situation, that creates challenges and usual processes, and makes it much more–somehow art becomes and takes over everything. Permeating everything, the totality of it really interests me. There is nothing else but being there and spending time. We will be in places that we rarely can see, and that no one else occupies. This is an extraordinary and luxurious situation. What has always been crucial for me in this process of Liquid Becomings is the adventure, the openness of it, it’s a dream, anything can happen. It brings a different logic, a different perception, a different temporarily, displacing the usual ways we take part in space and time.

Ewa – On the boat, it is like a small and closed society – a “state of the boat.”  It is like in a story, you can both invent – and expect – everything. Something unpredictable which excites me a lot.

Ewa, Aga and Maria will be joined on the Vistula journey starting 30 August by artists: Patryk Zakrocki, Malgorzata Markiewicz, Carola Uehlken, Gosia Kępa, Marta Niedbał, interdisciplinary artist, Sophie Thun, Małgorzata Kuciewicz, Flavia Barbosa Pinheiro and Keli Freitas.

On 29 June in Belgrade, the curators and consortium of Liquid Becomings announced the participating artists and sailing routes of the boats. Following an open call launched in March 2024, the participating artists were selected to join the curators for four journeys on boats sailing along the Danube, the Vistula, the Rhine, and the Tagus. Each crew, the first departing on 27 August on the Danube, will follow its own itinerary and will be committed to imagining alternative modes of togetherness, and exploring ways of creating a future for Europe that is better, fairer, regenerative: just and abundant for all. Held at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, the event in Belgrade included a sail through some of the capital’s historical landmarks, the premiere of MOTILITY, Marija Balubdžić’s newly composed theme song for Liquid Becomings, and the presentation of Four Rivers, a series of textile paintings by Siniša Ilić inspired by the routes.

The European Pavilion 2024: Liquid Becomings brings together artists and curators from 17 nationalities. Commissioned by the European Cultural Foundation, it is a collaboration of international organisations led by Dutch Stichting Passaros and its network espaço agora now: Teatro Meia Volta (PT), MS Fusion (AU), United Artist Labor (SE), FLOW (PL). It is curated by Bojan Đorđev, Laura Kalauz, Maria Magdalena Kozłowska, Siniša Ilić, Alfredo Martins, Annette Mees, Naomi Russell and Olga Uzikaeva, with Agnieszka Brzezanska and Ewa Ciepielewska.

Find the press release – with a clickthrough to the all participating artists – by clicking the link below.

We caught up with Naomi Russell – co-founder of agora now – to hear the latest news about the preparations for Liquid Becomings, The European Pavilion 2024, due to set sail in August.

Tell us a bit about your role as both a curator and Producer of Liquid Becomings

I’m the founder of agora now, a movement I started after many conversations with performance artists and makers from around the world who wanted to create a different kind of space for residencies and for knowledge exchange. Agora now led the consortium of partners and curators that responded to the open call from the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) to create The European Pavilion 2024.

Liquid Becomings is The European Pavilion for 2024. It’s not a traditional Pavilion or building, neither is it a space to be filled. It’s a time-based liquid pavilion, a flow of journeys, made up of small boats sailing along four of Europe’s greatest rivers.

Next week between the 7th and 11^th of April, the Liquid Becomings curatorial team is gathering in Portugal. We’re looking forward to working together to plan the different journeys and the activities for each river. One important task when we meet is to select other artists who will join us on the different journeys later in 2024.

We called out for artists after the announcement of the commission on 14 February and received many wonderful proposals from Poland, Brazil, Slovenia, Switzerland, Peru, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, Argentina, America, France, Serbia, Croatia, Germany, South Africa, Czechoslovakia, and Portugal. The resident artists who will be chosen will join us to explore the concept of togetherness, co-creating ways of being together by building connections with the communities we will meet on the journeys.

Co-devised by artist-led collective espaço agora now – a movement driven by creating spaces to meet and be together – in Liquid Becomings these spaces are the rivers, the nervous system of Europe.

To give a flavour of how the project will come together we’ve made three short films: Boats, Journeying Together and Rivers, in which our curatorial team tell you more about the rivers we’ll be sailing along ­– the tranquillity that comes with being by the water, the sounds of life on the river, the potential for making these spaces special, and how water will inspire our work with communities.

You’ll also find out what will happen, what to expect, how meals and stories will be exchanged, how conversations will be held – and you’ll also be able to explore some of our provocations: How do things change as the rivers pass through different countries (thirteen in total)? How can rivers be both borders and fluidly borderless? Rivers carry the memories, histories and myths of our continent: how can we find ways to listen to what the rivers are telling us?

During our travels over the course of Liquid Becomings, we want to meet you. When we’ve finished, we’ll have found new ways of being together and new ways to tell each others’ stories.

Liquid Becomings is an espaço agora now production in partnership with FLOW, MS-Fusion, Teatro Meia Volta and United Artist Labour and has been curated by Bojan Đorđev, Laura Kalauz, Maria Magdalena Kozłowska, Siniša Ilić, Alfredo Martins, Annette Mees, Rainer Prohaska, Naomi Russell, and Olga Uzikaeva.

We invite you to watch the presentation of The European Pavilion 2024: Liquid Becomings, which took place at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam on February 14, 2024.

After a welcome from André Wilkens, Director of ECF, the jury representatives Sepake Angiama (chair), Ferran Barenblit and Hassan Mahamdallie elaborated on their  decision. Naomi Russel and Annette Mees, co-curators of  Liquid Becomings, then presented the content and plans of the project. The other co-curators and representatives of partner organizations FLOW (Warsaw), MS-Fusion (Vienna), Teatro Meia Volta (Lisbon) and United Artist Labour (Belgrade) took part in the final conversation, online from their cities.

Click the link below to watch the full presentation.

Imagine that the future of Europe is in your hands

The winner of The European Pavilion commission for 2024 is Liquid Becomings, a project led by the independent artists’ collective espaço agora now, in partnership with FLOW, MS-Fusion, Teatro Meia Volta and United Artist Labour.

Liquid Becomings is not a traditional Pavilion. It is not an exhibition. It’s not even in a single location. Liquid Becomings is a journey, an adventure, a radical experiment.

Setting sail on September 1 for twenty-eight days, four boats will travel simultaneously along four European rivers: the Danube, the Vistula, the Rhine, and the Tagus, crossing a total of thirteen countries. Their crews of artists and captain will each focus on different themes: Ruins and Monsters, Perimeters, Togetherness, and Bodies and Politics. Each boat will make space for the communities and people they meet along the way to come together and share conversations and creativity, to explore and imagine the stories that will be told by the Europe of tomorrow – stories inspired by these four great waterways.

Europe is not an island, it is its rivers

Liquid Becomings will trace the contours of Europe through its rivers, focusing on alternative centres and movements, unseen territories and communities, as well as peripheral geographies and new perspectives. Through the rich symbolism of water, Liquid Becomings will explore the fluidity of the European identity, and asks what the future holds.

We are pleased to present the five finalists selected following our call to curate and host The European Pavilion 2024.

During the past weeks, our external jury reviewed a longlist of submissions for their artistic potential to radically reimagine Europe and provoke critical questions.

The jury will soon finalise interviews with the five finalists still in the run for receiving a EUR 500,000 commissioning grant. In January, we will announce which of the remaining curatorial concepts is selected to develop and host The European Pavilion 2024.

When the project now is closing we would like to present two videos created by Dinner for Future’s companion artists.

“The enigmatic works of Ingeborg” by Johan Widén and “Cum Pane” by Elin Maria Johansson, Ylva Gislén and Johan Widén. You find them at Dinner for Future’s webpage.

The European Pavilion in Rome is a public programme that brings together artists, thinkers and researchers from across the continent and offers panel discussions, talks and workshops, music performances, a virtual reality environment, as well as sculptural and multimedia installations.

Over the course of three days, we will be addressing questions such as: How, through the metaphor of the pavilion, can we rethink the space and the landscape of Europe? What does a European Pavilion look like and what can it mean?

In French, the word ‘pavilion’ also refers to the visible architecture of our ear: the part that allows listening. With this in mind, the programme will pay particular attention to the rich diversity of languages and voices that make up Europe, including in particular those that are too often silenced or marginalised.

Thinking about Europe today is not possible without also taking into account the challenges faced by our continent, not least those posed by the war in Ukraine. While in Rome, we will draw inspiration from collective and individual initiatives engaged in efforts to overcome colonialism and the struggle against any forms of exploitative and discriminatory politics, and forced displacement.

The programme is co-curated by European Cultural Foundation Programme Manager Lore Gablier and Ukrainian curator Lesia Kulchynska, in close collaboration with all participating organisations: Ambasada Kultury (Berlin-Vilnius), ARNA (Sweden), Brunnenpassage (Vienna), EUPavilion (Rome-Zürich), Fondazione Studio Rizoma (Palermo-Rome), Iniva (London), L’Internationale (Madrid, Warsaw, Barcelona, Ljubljana, Eindhoven), OGR (Turin), State of Concept (Athens) and Studio Wild (Amsterdam).

In 2021-2022, The European Pavilion is supported by Fondazione CRT and developed in partnership with Camargo Foundation and Kultura Nova Foundation.

Looking forward to seeing you in Rome!

Read the full programme & RSVP [ENG] here.

Read the full programme & RSVP [Italian] here.

For the Biosphere Festival, Dinner for Future’s three accompanying artists Elin Maria Johansson, Ylva Gislén and Johan Widén have made a series of art works that in different ways touch on our relationship with nature, food and food production. Through paintings, sound- and video works, ongoing conversations and happenings, the visitor is invited to become part of a metaphorical web that links the past, the present and the future.

Cum Pane will meet the public during the Biosphere Festival in Vombsjösänkan in the south of Sweden.

An introduction to iniva and the DRIFT digital pavilion – visit the pavilion here.

A short film by iniva, filmed in the Stuart Hall Libary, London.

Contributors: Stuart Hall Library Research Associates –  Lola Olufemi, Rahila Haque, Adjoa Armah.  Open School East Director – Polly Brannan; iniva Archivist and Engagement Producer – Kaitlene Koranteng; iniva Curatorial Trainee – Tobi Falade; iniva Communications Manager – Jemima Yong; iniva Curator -Beatriz Lobo; iniva Library and Archive Manager – Tavian Hunter

DRIFT Film credits: Producer Director – Anthony Comber-Badu; Camera -Jack Barraclough; Editor – Jack Barraclough; Music – Jesse Gallagher (The Blue Pearl) Jesse Gallagher  (The Annunaki Return) Jesse Gallagher (Spenta Mainyu).

It’s been a blast! Two weeks ago StoryTelling;Europe! celebrated its premiere with the StoryWalks and the opening of the multi stationary exhibition in public space A Viennese Caravanserai.
We celebrated and engaged with a lot of different people – protagonists from the productions, artists, neighbors, colleagues from other institutions and many more
At this point we are very pleased to share some picturesque insights with you before we gonna have a short summer break, but the exhibition is still on view till 1st of October. Check out our website and download the map to navigate through the exhibition A Viennese Caravanserai and listen to the soundfiles of the StoryWalks.
StoryTelling:Europe! continues with the following activities after the summer:
–>  Let’s Cay and Talk // Open Space on StoryTelling:Europe! 16th of September 2022, 19th at Brunnenpassage
–> Presentation at the StreetArtFestival the 1st of October 2022 at Yppenpark
–> Show at the Volkskunde Museum Vienna from the 23rd of November 2022

Stay tuned***

The last few weeks have brought many collective learnings and inspirations to our StoryTelling:Europe! Project. In the framework of two Co-Creation Labs that included spaces to create, experiment and reflect, the team dived into central questions of Europe, its frontiers and potentialities.

In the stories and interactions, we have experienced in the microcosm of the Brunnenmarket, we found many valuable clues, answers and insights that illuminated our questions. We put the focus on the collective needs we have identified when thinking about the past, present and future of Europe and even on the emotional reactions evoked by this word associated with very different life experiences and realities. Europe as a bridge, as a place of re/construction, as a place of trauma and dream, as a space of transgenerational co-creation, connection and transformation, a place with a collective responsibility and very diverse experiences of privilege.

The exercises of imagination and dialogue have allowed us to question stereotypical images and narratives and open ourselves to listening to the hidden stories, those that happen between the lines, those that were never told or heard, in a very situated context, here and now, among our neighbours, workers, entrepreneurs and children of the local communities.

The two artistic research processes of StoryTelling:Europe! – the development of audio-guided StoryWalks and the mixed-media exhibition in public space A Viennese Caravanserai – allowed us to think about strategies of intervention of our contemporary realities through art, opening up a spectrum of possibilities of unlearning, reimagining and building shelter for our common human experiences and dreams.

The team is now very excited, and concentrated in the last days of preparation and rehearsals before the opening of our artistic productions to the public!

–> StoryWalks and audio station
A project by Melika Ramić & protagonists from the Brunnenmarket
StoryWalks for the public: Thu June 23^rd & Fri June 24^th, 4.30 p.m.
Audio station in the window gallery of Brunnenpassage: from June 23^rd till September 2022

–> Exhibition Opening of “A Viennese Caravanserai” with carpet concert by Seba Kayan and Kamyab Sadeghi
June 24^th, 2022
A project by Asma Aiad & the business owners of the Brunnenmarket
June 24^th to October 1^st 2022

For more information see our website.

Different kinds of experiences met, and all the senses were used, in the round table conversation in the artist Johan Widén’s studio on 5 May. At the center of the conversation was the question of how we can find strategies to deal with an increasingly uncertain future regarding food on the table. With reflections starting in Greek myths, over to grain’s path through Europe from ancient times to the present day and over to intuition as a guide for choosing seeds, the conversation opened up many new perspectives. The starting point was today’s crisis, showing how interconnected all countries are, but the conversation trailed over to the importance of new stories, as in science fiction, as enabler of alternatives for the future. And even if we did not come to a solution for the starting question, we went home with new hope.

Exhibition: May 28th 2022 – September 24th 2022

State of Concept Athens is happy to present the second episode of Waste/d Pavilion, the solo exhibition of Oliver Ressler, entitled Assets Must be Stranded, curated by iLiana Fokianaki, accompanied by BONAFIDE 2, a pairing for a young art critic and a young artist, contoured by a public program composed by PAT.

Oliver Ressler has been for many decades working in the intersection of art and politics, closely inspired by and connected with the work of various activist groups and social movements, civic society and volunteer groups. Overall his work is characterized by themes that relate to politics, the aftermath of globalization and turbo-capitalism, protest and democracy, the commons in relationship to labour and questions that relate to ecology and sustainability and how these connect to the damaging effects of the anthropocene/capitalocene.

For this exhibition, Oliver Ressler presents works that will resonate very much to Greek audiences who the last decade witnessed protests and massive mobilization against extraction and pollution throughout the country: from the case of Erimitis in Corfu to the resistance against wind turbines in the historic Agrafa mountains, to the goldmine in Skouries in Northern Greece. Ressler has been following the environmentalist movement and has produced a series of films examining questions of climate activism. Primarily the artist will premiere for this exhibition, his most recent film The Path is Never the Same (2022), discussing the efforts of activists and local residents from 2012 until this day to stop the lignite mine operations in Hambacher Forest in the region of Rheine, Germany by occupying trees and living on them.

Since the 1960s, a movement of globally connected artists, intellectuals and activists has been persistently campaigning for the restitution of African cultural artefacts, and human remains as part of the decolonisation strategies. After a long period of stagnation, the debate has accelerated in recent years, with examples of physical restitution such as the Behanzin treasures to the Republic of Benin or the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. While actual restitution will be decided at the highest diplomatic level and delayed for as long as possible, it will be up to artists and civil society to speed up and accompany this process. The time has come to follow those who have led the way to create a broad and transnational movement. How can these objects be returned in their symbolic, social and historical significance? How can restitution be linked to contemporary contexts of knowledge production, social interaction and global justice?

Studio Rizoma and GROUP50:50 invite artists, activists and thinkers from Europe and Africa that represent the avant-garde of a transnational restitution movement to present and discuss their practices. After the first stage in Palermo, the “Transnational Restitution Movement” protagonists will travel on to Leipzig, Lubumbashi, Kinshasa and Berlin in 2022 and 2023. In each city, they involve local artists and activists in their reflections and artistic production to take the transnational restitution movement forward.

For ECF 2022 magazine, Common Ground, Monica Sassatelli (associate Professor of sociology at the University of Bologna) published “A Sentimental Journey through Europe” (p. 135-140):  an essay that reflects on the notion of European Sentiment and how The European Pavilion initiative contributes to enriching it.

The idea of a pavilion that is singular in the name but actually plural and diverse in its concretisation seems really promising to materialise and develop these family resemblances and this quest to reimagine Europe. A space that is not a predefined box but grows with its content, some of which will be contradictory and filled of ‘pluralistic agonism’.

– Monica Sassatelli

#driftdigitalpavillion

iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) in partnership with aabaakwad 2022 The Sami Pavilion raises the question, ‘What is Nation?’, explored through an in-person conversation with artists Sonia Boyce, Zineb Sedira, Stan Douglas, and Yuki Kihara, and chaired by iniva artistic director Sepake Angiama.

What is Nation? opens up the possibility to think beyond boundaries and borders of land and water, thinking through what is carried in the body to m/otherlands, to disperse diasporas, forge post-national imaginaries, identities, communities & formations of new fluid subjectivities. We ask the artists presenting at the 59th Venice Biennale, ‘What does it mean to represent a nation?’

The conversation will be recorded by iniva, and included in its Drift digital pavilion, which will launch online in May 2022.

This event is part of a wider day-long event hosted by aabaakwad, titled aabaakwad conversations taking place on the 22 of April in Venice to coincide with the 59th Venice Biennale. For more information about the full programme and details on how to attend, please see aabaakwad’s website here.

Image credits: Water at the three project sites- The Thames River, the Margate Coastline, and Venetian Lagoon. Photos by Beatriz Lobo.

Yuki Kihara (photographed by Sarah Hunter), Stan Douglas (photographed by Seham), Sonia Boyce (photographed by Anne Purkiss) and Zineb Sedira – all images courtesy of the artists.

”Europe meets in the lunch salad, the world meets at the dinner table”

The European Lunch Salad is a simple way to describe how interconnected the countries in Europe are in every day food products. ARNA asked our fellow European Pavilions to send photos of a popular lunch salad in their home town. It turned out that salads from Vienna, Madrid, Turin, Amsterdam and here in the south of Sweden are very similar to each other. So in a sense we are sharing the same meals around Europe.

See the lunch salads and what they contain at https://arna.nu/en/projects/dinner-for-future

March 10-11, 2022, Dinner for Future arranged a scenario planning about the food in Vombsjösänkan 2037. The workshop led to exciting conversations about the food on our plates as the point where local and international development meet and how the Ukraine War now makes these complex connections clearer.

On site KickOff with the artists for StoryTelling:Europe!

Brunnenpassage is delighted to announce that we finally could host an on site kick-off meeting with the invited artists involved for our production StoryTelling:Europe! which is part the European Pavilion Initiative. Asma Aiad, Melika Ramic and Natalia Hecht are ready to start their work in the neighborhood of Brunnenpassage, the market area, which represents Europe and beyond within a nutshell. On the basis of the concept of our two interlinked projects which will have premiere and opening 23rd and 24th of June 2022, we are diving more and more into the topics and emerging questions which might be of relevance in the collective process of transmedia storytelling in the upcoming month.

Brunnenpassage is excited and very honored to work with those wonderful artists within the European Pavilion Initiative. We are happy to introduce you to:

Asma Aiad, conceptual artist, activist and youth worker.
She has earned her Bachelor’s degree in political science and is currently studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is completing her Master’s degree in Gender Studies, with a research focus in Islamic feminism. Her activism and artistic work deal with topics like identity constructions, anti-racism, feminism and the deconstruction of stereotypes. She is a co-founder of “Salam Oida”, an initiative that celebrates Muslim culture and art in Austria. Her various works such as “This is not a headscarf” or “(Un)Seen Sacred Spaces”, she explores her Muslim identity in Austria and Europe and issues such as discrimination, representation, and art.
For StoryTelling:Europe! she is developing a multimedia stations exhibition in co-creation with protagonists of the market under the title “A Viennese Caravanserai”.

Melika Ramic, performance director and art education
She has worked at the Burgtheater Wien, Wiener Festwochen, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus as well as Dschungel Wien, Brunnenpassage ArtSpcialSpace and others. In 2010 she founded her association motschnik and staged various plays for young audiences, which were shown at national (spleen*graz, Szene Bunte Wähne, SCHÄXPIR Linz) and international festivals in the UK, Malta, Switzerland, Luxembourg.
Since 2017 she has collaborated with the Canadian group Mammalian Diving Reflex on projects such as Haircuts by Children, These Are The People In Your Neighbourhood, and All The Sex I’ve Ever Had, touring to the US, Finland, Australia, Slovenia, and Germany.
In 2021 she was curatorial collaborator for the family program of the Kultursommer Wien. She is currently working as an artistic collaborator on the long-term project “Humboldting the Humboldt” between the Humboldt Forum Berlin and the Thomas Mann Gymnasium Berlin under the artistic direction of Darren O’Donnell.
For StoryTelling:Europe! she is creating performative StoryWalks with and by children of a neighbourhood school class collecting and sharing stories with and by local shop operators and market stall workers.

Natalia Hecht, Community Artist, Psychologist, Cultural Evaluation Expert from Argentina living in Vienna.
At the core of her artistic practice are participatory co-creation and reflection processes with communities. Through collaboration, artistic intervention and critical social reflection, central topics such as diversity, migration, transculturality, feminism and collective care, are explored in order to initiate processes of self-representation and transformation. Natalia has specialised in designing and leading evaluation processes in the cultural sector with an art-based, discrimination sensitive, participatory approach. She has been part of Brunnenpassage Team for many years developing artistic projects and leading community engagement and evaluation processes.
Her role in StoryTelling:Europe! is supervisor, curatorial one with a focus on the development of thematic focus, methodology and the interrelation between the project rails.

Let’s get started in the field – we’ll keep you posted.

The Democracy Pavilion conference in Ljubljana on March 9th and 11th is organized by the L’Internationale association in cooperation with ZRC SAZU as part of the European Pavilion program, an initiative by the European Cultural Foundation.

Plans for the Democracy Pavilion were first drawn up some months ago. However, with the current Russian’s army invasion of Ukraine in our minds, L’Internationale association wants to use this platform to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

We will begin the sessions on Wednesday with news from artists and cultural workers in Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora. We hope that some of them will be able to travel to Ljubljana so that we can listen to what they want and need. During the three days, we will also discuss many issues of democracy, Europe, colonial legacies and contemporary empires, also remembering ongoing conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere, as well as the histories of exploitation and erasure that still manifest themselves in the present. Our question remains what does democracy mean in these current, bleak conditions? How do we both seek to defend the limited space to think and act that we still have and push for a new sense of living well and caring for the planet we share?

Conference programme

The panels and keynote talks will be streamed online from European Cultural Foundation YouTube channel  

How does the food of the future taste is the question ARNA asks in Dinner for Future. The basis of the work is an understanding of food as a complex network of connections. Not only between landscapes, plants, animals and people but also between producers and consumers in a global market.

The project takes place in Vombsjösänkan, an area which is a candidate for becoming a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Here are some of the Sweden’s best arable lands that have the longest known history of agriculture in the country, lean lands, historically extensively cultivated land, several nature reserves and a large military training field. The issues raised by the project are highly relevant in a broader context: Sweden’s domestic food production has been halved in thirty years and is today very vulnerable to external disturbances. These are becoming increasingly apparent, from the global pandemic to climate change and the war in Ukraine.

The project’s three coompanion artists will help to capture and, through literary and artistic work, shape and complicate the issues that arise during the project. Primarily, they will present their material during the Biosphere Festival in September 2022, but also during the project’s workshops and meetings that will bring together farmers and other food producers, researchers, students and other stakeholders.

We are excited to welcome the following artists to Dinner for Future!

Ylva Gislén is a poet / author. Among other things, she was the director of the national Art Graduate School 2010-2015. www.ylvagislen.se

Johan Widén has been an artist, nationally and internationally active since 1988. Was 2000-2010 professor of free art (painting) at Kungl. Stockholm Academy of the Arts. www.johanwiden.studio

Elin Maria Johansson is an artist, educated at Kungl. The Academy of Fine Arts. Works with video, performance and installation. www.elinmariajohansson.com

Research Network Associate Cairo Clarke shares reflections on the shape her research has taken over the past year as her practice began to spill into territory outside the curatorial sphere. Piecing together fragments from archive visits, conversations with family, readings and materials she has come into contact with through this period of research as well as the everyday conditions that have continued to shape it.

The event title and line of inquiry is a quote from Alexis Pauline Gumbs in conversation with Christina Sharpe for the 39th issue of The Funambulist.

Cairo Clarke is a curator and writer based in London and Naples. Her work is informed by slowness, it centers forms of knowledge production and dissemination that slip between the cracks, are formed on unstable ground and take on multiple temporalities. Supporting strands of theorising taking place in autonomous spaces and holding space for the mess.

Cairo has worked closely with artists to develop and share instances of work across film, performance, printed matter and events as well as sharing self-led curatorial projects across numerous sites including Pompeii Commitment: Archeological Matters, Deptford X and LUX. In 2019 she launched SITE, a publication and curatorial project exploring alternative encounters with artist practice and the dissemination of research. Cairo is the 2020/21 Curatorial Fellow at LUX. Previously she was a member of The Black Curriculum, and continues to work in educational spaces.

Within the framework of the European Pavilion initiative, the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, has invited French-Tunisian historian Leyla Dakhli to lead a collective process entitled Translating Resistance, Smuggling Utopia. Consisting of researchers, translators, artists, and activists, the collective shares, reads, compares, and discusses texts, archives, and ideas to retrace some trajectories of resistance and utopian thinking in ​Southern ​Europe and the Mediterranean.

In December 2021, Leyla Dakhli came to Camargo for a 5-day residency and as the curator of this program, she extended this invitation to philosopher Elsa Dorlin and choreographer Caroline Meyer Picard. Together they started an initial discussion on the possible angles, questions, materials and forms they would like to explore throughout the process.

In February, the trio will return to Camargo to pursue their reading and translation of political and poetic texts that challenge the very concept of border. During this workshop, a few threads will be pulled from a tangle of words, images, sounds, and ideas, to be weaved into more tangible directions. An actual bibliography of texts to be translated will start taking shape, which may include fragments of manifestos, poetry, speculative fiction, ethnographic writing, and scientific literature.

On 12 November 2021, the European Cultural Foundation, Fondazione CRT, and OGR Torino hosted the public kick-off of The European Pavilion.

You can watch the recording of the presentation on:

Syndicat! is part of Studio Rizoma’s contribution to the European Pavilion.

Picking up the roots of early sindicalisti, workers’ unions and anarchist philosophy, Syndicat! invites artists, researchers and citizens to elaborate and present ideas for concrete alliances that build connections between the port cities Palermo, Tunis and Bremen, culminating in a series of performative conferences to be staged over multiple days at Ecomuseo Urbano Mare Memoria Viva.

Syndicat! is neither utopian nor an abstract intellectual exercise but a concrete experiment in action, drawing from the lessons of past failures and successes in Tunisia, Sicily and the European Union. Top-down, institutional attempts to build functioning transnational alliances and practices appear stalled and victim to mutual distrust. And yet: is it possible to federate not states but people?

The talks and discussions are divided into four thematic sections that serve as an overview of topics that are relevant across both shores, clearly presenting a shared interest: Liquid Territory, The Port City, Agrinomics and Shared History, Shared Future.

Until 26/11/2021 at Spazio Punch, Venice

As part of the European Pavilion, we supported The Forbidden Garden of Europe, a project by Amsterdam-based architecture practice Studio Wild. Presented as part of the public parallel programme of the Dutch pavilion during the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the project takes the form of a garden of ‘invasive alien plant species’, which have been listed for their ethnic and biological characteristics and pose a threat to European native species. Using plants as a metaphor, The Forbidden Garden of Europe sheds new light on politically charged topics and tells the story of these invasive alien plant species.

While developing the European Pavilion programme, we produced a series of podcasts that contribute to a critical and creative debate on the future of Europe, and which are a first manifestation of The European Pavilion itself. Together with our guests, we discuss topics such as public space and ecology, post-national imaginaries, representation and lived experiences, or the need for a just transition.

Listen to all the episodes here.