an environmental scientist, a boat-builders, a filmmaker and an anthropologists want to use scientific inquiry, craftmanship and artistic practice to create a platform on the river spree in berlin. this floating house-boat will provide a room for exploration into the possibilities for hybrid connections and to visualize collaborative stories about the loss of ground in times of the rising tide.
we want to construct a float,
to turn a brail into a collective living room – into an exhibition space,
to establish a contact zone, to build a float here as a site of exchanging narratives about the rising waters.
“Islands are washing away. slowly. The Cateret Islands are the first, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Kiribati will follow Takuu. People are already planning their emigration from places which are about to disappear form the map, to be swallowed by the sea.”
Living on comparably safe ground in berlin, the flooding of these distant islands to most of us seems to be but the tragic loss of an exotic paradise. What it actually means for the people to deal with the deprevation of safe ground underneath their feet is perceivable only if we get to communicative proximity.
The following links provide starting points from which we are exploring hybrid possibilities of documenting the dynamics and results of the rising waters as well as visually embedding them into the “safe space” of Berlin.
- How-to guide for environmental refugees by Ursula Rakova
- Tulele Peisa (website currently disabled because of funding problems)
- Rising Waters. Pacific Islanders in Communication