with
Mirja Busch
Thesea Rigou Efstathopoulos
Anton Filatov
Sanne Vaassen
Claire Waffel
U8 Kollektiv (Laurence Ermacova and Neïtah Janzing) with Rabab Haidar
Exhibition
2/8 – 13/10/2024
Curated by Annika Reketat and Cleo Wächter
»By Way of Water« is the third part of the annual exhibition programme KANTEN UND KNOTEN
Events
1/8/2024 6 pm
Opening
7:30 pm Performance with Singen3000
3/8/2024 4 pm
Water Histories
Artist Talk
23/8/2024 5:30 pm
Eintauchen – ein Ausstellungsdialog
[in German]
13/9/2024 5:30 pm
Plunging in – an exhibition dialogue
[in English]
29/9/2024 1-7:30 pm
Programme for the River Day
13/10/2024 4 pm
Finissage
Opening
1/8/2024 6 pm
7:30 pm Performance from Singen3000
Free entry
On Thursday, 1 August 2024, from 6 pm the Bärenzwinger invites you to the opening of the exhibition “By Way of Water”.
As beings whose bodies consist largely of water, there is no fixed boundary between us humans and this element. And yet we often perceive it as something alienating rather than unifying. ‘By Way of Water’, the third exhibition in our annual program KANTEN UND KNOTEN (Knots and Edges), takes inspiration from confluences – the points where different bodies of water meet – to dissolve rigid boundaries and categorizations in the ways we relate to each other and to our (urban) surroundings. The exhibition unites six artistic positions across various media to explore how space can be inscribed, read, and (re-)interpreted through the lens of hydro-cartographic and hydro-feminist approaches.
The exhibition will be accompanied by artist talks and exhibition tours and a special program on World Rivers Day (29 September 2024).
With artistic contributions by: Mirja Busch, Thesea Rigou, Anton Filatov, Sanne Vaassen, Claire Waffel, U8 Kollektiv with Rabab Haidar
Water Histories
3/8/2024 4 pm
Artist Talk
In English
Free Entry
The artist Sanne Vaassen and Alejandra Villa, doctoral student in ecohydrology at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), will enter into a dialog about what unites them: a fascination with the origins and transformations of water landscapes. Together, they will blur the boundaries between their disciplines and exchange their perspectives on the relationship between humans and water. The starting point of the dialog is Sanne’s installation Shaped by Water, a three-dimensional geochronology of the human-water-relationship made of glass, which can be seen in the atrium of the Bärenzwinger.
Artist Sanne Vaassen explores the fluid transitions in matter and phenomena, focusing on the water cycle, seasonal tree changes, and language evolution. Central to her work are themes of time and change, intersecting with ecology, geography, history, and anthropology. Her work has been exhibited at the Bonnefantenmuseum (Maastricht), SALTS (Basel), Unit 1 Gallery (London), and 601Artspace (New York). She was a resident at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in 2014-2015.
Alejandra Villa is a second-year PhD candidate at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB). In the Department of Ecohydrology and Biogeochemistry, she studies organic pollutants in the hyporheic zone, the boundary between river and groundwater. Her interest in water issues began in Colombia, where she earned a Bachelor’s in Geological Engineering. She pursued hydrogeology through work in a water resources company and academic institutions across Europe.
Eintauchen – ein Ausstellungsdialog
23.8.2024 17:30 Uhr
Eintauchen – ein Ausstellungsdialog
Eintritt frei
Ein Ausstellungsdialog zwischen den anwesenden Menschen und Organismen, den Kurator*innen und den teilnehmenden Künstler*innen. Dieses dialogische Format wurde von Thesea Rigou als Erweiterung ihrer künstlerischen Praxis initiiert. Es nimmt ihre ortsspezifische Installation stay with the trouble II als Ausgangspunkt, um Formen des Zusammenflusses in den Beziehungen zwischen Natur und Kultur zu diskutieren.
Anwesende Künstler*innen: Thesea Rigou und Claire Waffel
In deutscher Sprache
Plunging in – an exhibition dialogue
13/9/2024 5:30 pm
Plunging in – an exhibition dialogue [in English]
Free Entry
An exhibition dialogue between the people and organisms present, the curators, and the participating artists. This dialogical format has been initiated by Thesea Rigou as an extension of their artistic practice. It takes the site-specific installation stay with the trouble II as a starting point to discuss forms of confluence in nature-culture relations.
Artists present: Thesea Rigou, Laurence Ermacova (U8 Kollektiv), Rabab Haidar
In English
“Day on and along the River”
29.09.2024, 1 – 7.30 pm
Free Entry
Start: Bärenzwinger Berlin, Rungestr. 30, 10179 Berlin
End: Flussbad-Garten am Spreekanal, Sperlingsgasse 1, 10178 Berlin
On Sunday, 29 September 2024, the Bärenzwinger invites you to a ‘Day on and along the River’ as part of the current exhibition ‘By Way of Water’. The event is dedicated to the diverse relationships of the city of Berlin and its inhabitants to the Spree. The focus will be on the personal relationship to the river, the current state of Berlin’s waters, water-related politics and the tangible effects of climate change.
The programme offers various formats for experiencing and reflecting on the Spree from different perspectives. A workshop on Spree-specific memories, , a poetic walk along the Spree and a screening invite you to gain new insights into the relationship between people and water (not only) in urban areas.
Programme:
- 13:00: Workshop ‘Waterways of Memory’ with Om Bori (artist and researcher)
- 15:00: Introduction to the exhibition by Annika Reketat and Cleo Wächter (curators)
- 16:00: TBD
- ca 17:00: Walk along the Spree with Clementine Butler/Gallie (ReRouting) and Viviane Tabach (Co-Making Matters)
- 18:30: Screening and lecture by Claire Waffel (artist and researcher)
Programmdetails “Day on and along the river”
13:00 pm
“Waterways of Remembrance”
Workshop – Om Bori
The workshop, led by Om Bori, invites participants to explore their personal memories and experiences of the River Spree and its many canals in Berlin. The focus will be on a creative exploration of this extensive river system that shapes both the urban and natural environment in Berlin. Participants will learn the technique of Om Boris’ water-filled objects and create their own works of art filled with Spree water.
During the workshop, participants will be given time for writing and reflection to transform their individual experiences into texts and drawings. The memories are deliberately fragmented, as our memories themselves are often fragmented: We remember only parts of a story, which we change and add to over time. These fragments of memory are assembled into a visual composition that reflects the participants’ personal relationship with the body of water.
Filling the objects with water from the River Spree creates a direct connection between the participants’ stories and the river. Finally, the works will be sealed as ‘time capsules’ to preserve both the memories and the current state of the Spree for the future – a river whose water quality is considered critically polluted in many places and reflects the challenges and conditions of our time.
- Participants are invited to bring their own personal memorabilia (small items, photos, texts, etc.) related to the Spree.
- Registration is welcome, but not required: visit@baerenzwinger.berlin Workshop language is German, with translation available if required.
- Location: Bärenzwinger, Rungestraße 30, 10179 Berlin (u2 Märkisches Museum, u8 Heinrich Heirne Straße)
Bio:
Om Bori is a Berlin-born artist who lives and works in her hometown. She graduated with honors in Fine Arts from the Berlin University of the Arts and in Intermedia Art from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, where she is currently pursuing a PhD in Practice on the topic “Family, River, Archive: The Materialization of Memory.” In her PhD research, she explores the connections between water and place on the one hand, and family history and its material and immaterial archives on the other.
Her interdisciplinary practice addresses the global hydrological crisis by combining critical humanist research, eco-feminist theory, and art. Bori’s work explores the cultural and symbolic connections between femininity and water, drawing on mythic representations of aquatic female figures to critique humanity’s exploitative relationship with nature. Through the lens of hydrofeminism, she creates multimedia projects that offer alternative narratives of resilience and ecological care, seeking to inspire more ethical environmental stewardship. Conceptually, her work operates at the intersection of narrative, moving and still images, focusing on how social and historical forces shape individual and collective life, and how people resist this structural determination—whether through work, hope, love, migration, or madness.
16:00 pm
RIPPLES: A group walk along the Spree
With Clementine Butler-Gallie (ReRouting) and Viviane Tabach (Co-Making Matters)
RIPPLES will be a group walk along the Spree, starting at Bärenzwinger and arriving at Flussbad Garten, inviting participants to move together to rhythms of the water and share stories of waterways from both near and far. The Spree becomes a catalyst for us to weave connections with sources of water that have shaped culture, art,
music, history, and more, reflecting on how they influence memory and imagination. Each stage of the journey will take a different walking rhythm, guiding our path through shifting currents of thought and movement. Together, we’ll explore the confluences of personal and collective stories, where the local meets the distant in a shared journey along the river’s edge.
- Registration is not required.
- The walk will take place in English
- Startingpoint: Bärenzwinger, Rungestraße 30, 10179 Berlin
Bio:
The walk is a collaboration between Clementine Butler-Gallie of ReRouting, a curatorial initiative exploring walking as a space for exchange and encounter, and Viviane Tabach of Co-Making Matters, a multidisciplinary platform at Haus der Statistik. Since 2023, they’ve been working together on a series of walking residencies and are both part of the nGbK working group for the project ‘Dissident Paths’ starting in 2025.
18:30 pm
“I Cannot See the Future from Here”
Claire Waffel
In her presentation in the Flussbad Garden Berlin, as part of the Day on and Along the River, the artist and researcher Claire Waffel, who works across photography, video and installation, will present her current work on two coastal communities and how these might be affected by rising seas in the future. The village of Fairbourne in Wales was said to produce Britains’ first climate refugees when it was decided a decade ago that the village could no longer be defended against rising seas.
In her spatial practice she explores the coastal defences of the village Mönkebude on the inland sea of the Stettin Lagoon and how these might help us imagine a future with a changing border between water and land. Through compiling different methodologies into a visual language, her research aims to reveal relationships between communities, architecture, climate change and futures.
- The presentation will be in English.
- The Presentation takes place at the Flussbad-Garten on the spreekanaal, in The Sperlingsgasse 1, 10178 Berlin
Read more on Claire’s work below
Sanne Vaassen
In her artistic practice, Sanne Vaassen (Heerlen, 1991) explores the fluid transition of matter and phenomena, such as the cycle of water, the transformation of trees during the seasons, and the evolution of language.
Central themes within her diverse works are time and processes of change. Thus, Vaassen’s work is at the interface with other disciplines such as ecology, geography, history and anthropology.
Her work has previously been shown in several group and solo exhibitions nationally and abroad, including the Bonnefantenmuseum (Maastricht), SALTS (Basel), Unit 1 Gallery (London), and 601Artspace (New York). She was also a resident at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in 2014-2015.
Claire Waffel
Claire Waffel is a visual artist based in Berlin. She studied Photography at the London College of Communication, where she was awarded the Sproxton Prize for her work. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in artistic research at the Bauhaus-University in Weimar, where she engages with rising seas and the consequences arising from the changing border between water and land.
Claire works with lens-based media, installation and storying in order to produce situated and embodied accounts of the spatialised phenomena of climate change. Key elements of her artistic research are to record, imagine and perform alternative and optimistic futures in person and collaboratively, therefore creating counter-narratives through active forms of participation.
By combining different approaches into a visual language, her artistic research reveals connections between place, coastal communities and climate change. She has exhibited her work at the Maxim Gorki Theater (Berlin), Kunsthaus Dresden, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien (Berlin), Wilhelm Wagenfeld Haus (Bremen) and MWW Wroclaw Contemporary Museum (Wroclaw), among others. She has been invited on artistic residencies by the Goethe-Institute in Prague, Košice and Jerusalem.
Mirja Busch
Mirja Busch’s artistic research explores the ontology and perception of puddles as an essentially anthropogenic, yet often overlooked element in the urban environment.
Over the past decade, she has experimented with diverse methods for documenting puddles, as well as innovative approaches to their visualization and interaction. These include artistic walks, classification systems, and linguistic explorations.
Thesea Rigou
Thesea Rigou Efstathopoulos (*1997, Limassol) is an artist and gardener based in Pankow. Thesea is a graduate of the Weißensee-Kunsthochschule Berlin and currently works as an art educator in various institutions in Berlin.
Thesea’s artistic practice explores socio-ecological themes in installations, performances, art books and printmaking.
Anton Filatov
Anton Filatov (from Karelia, Russia) is a media artist and musician with more than 10 years of trajectory. He produced several music releases and live shows under three different monikers: 0g, Anton Filatov and Wind in Willows.
His music and artworks have been presented in venues from Baku to Berlin, with a distinctive connection with the Finnish avant garde and Ambient scene. His interest in the contemporary experimental music scene brought him to Berlin, where he has resided since 2017.
During this period he has collaborated with other local art collectives on sound and visual synthesis: including Lacuna Lab, Noiseberg, Automaton, as well as assistanting in light design for media installations and performances featured artists like Theresa Baumgartner, Chris Watson, Tony Myatt, Matt Lambert and Michèle Lamy. Currently his creative endeavors play across the digital, physical and oral mediums. This way, Filatov attempts to step into audiovisual experiments that involve a close relation to physical space.
U8 Kollektiv mit Rabab Haidar
U8 Kollektiv
The U8 Kollektiv is a poetry collective based in Berlin and founded in December 2021 by poets Laurence Ermacova and Neïtah Janzing.
Inspired by the U-Bahn line U8, which traverses Berlin from north to south and intermingles different areas, the collective aims to engage in dialogue with the city through public actions, believing that poetry has the power to transform places.
Laurence Ermacova
Laurence Ermacova writes poetry in French and German. In her literary work, she traverses the boundary between languages, creating breaches through which the words of one can smoothly slip into the other, thus discreetly practicing the art of smuggling.
Her texts have been published in literary journals such as Stadtsprachen, Manuskripte, Revue Fragile, and Revue Konfluence. In 2021, she received the Research Fellowship for Non-German Literature from the Berlin Senate. In November 2023, she was a guest at the House for Writers and Translators in Ventspils, Latvia. In April 2024, her first poetry collection, “États de mes lieux – gesammelte gedichte,” was published by Éditions du Bunker, Paris.
She is active in the network of French-speaking authors in Berlin and is a member of the artists’ collective Literatur für das, was passiert. In 2021, she co-founded the U8 Collective with poet Neïtah Janzing to organize poetic actions in public spaces.
Rabab Haidar
Rabab Haidar, a Syrian Author and translator, writes in English and Arabic. Her texts, tales, and prose narrate the world during times of uncertainty, loss, and fear, exploring the strength that fragility holds.
Her works have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines in Europe and the Arabic world. In 2019, she received the Heinrich-Boell residency for Writers, relocated to Germany, and currently resides in Berlin.