What Waters Are You From?
2024 - Danube

As part of Liquid Becomings within The European Pavilion 2024, Elina Rodríguez and I worked closely together during a two-week expedition aboard the MS Fusion, an experimental trimaran. Travelling the Danube from Baja (Hungary) via Croatia and Romania to Kladovo (Serbia), we stopped at archaeological sites, environmental initiatives, museums, factories, and memorials reflecting the area’s complex geopolitical histories.

Traveling in an “unidentified” vessel with a multinational crew (including non-EU members) made border checks a defining encounter, which we processed through a material practice of collecting Danube clay and working with it en route. For the final three-day festival in Lisbon, we set up a temporary ‘border office’ where visitors answered “Which waters do you come from?” for a collective archive; short phrases were then hand-painted onto fabric as provisional flags using river clay, while participants modeled self-issued clay “passports.” The project culminated in a ritual action dissolving the flags and passports into the waters of Lisbon’s harbor, proposing new, fluid rituals of belonging, passage, and return.

The Crew consisted of: Élodie Olson-Coons (CH), Jaka Škapin (SI), Katarina Popovich (RS), Niel de Vries (NL) and Elina Rodríguez (ARG). Two curators: Siniša Ilić (RS) and Bojan Đorđev (RS). And the captain: Hanna Priemetzhofer (AT).