River calls examines forms of interaction – material, mental and spiritual – between rivers and humans and other living beings that allow new perceptions and conceptions of relationships and bring forth a sense for the long view. In a series of collaborative and singular research stays, the projects experiments and collects aesthetic practices with bodies of water that focus on questions of agency and interdependency.
Since time immemorial, rivers have evoked an imagination for a lived experience of time beyond a metaphorical role – such as the recurring and the never-same. What new insights on temporalities can develop in our relationship with rivers in today's times of climate crisis and impending catastrophes? How can rivers change our temporal orientation, senses and actions?
Even though rivers are now claimed and at some places recognized as legal persons and renaturation processes are attempting to restore the benefits of the natural balance of river landscapes, the most visible human practices in dealing with rivers remain exploitative: for cooling servers or nuclear reactors, for disposing of wastewater, for generating energy through backwater or as water reservoirs for agriculture. This project however seeks cultural dimensions of the exchange with rivers that strive for sustainability and reciprocity in their experiences. Artistic methods are used to examine and ask how rivers can be treated with respect, what can be given back to them and what we humans can learn with/through them. How can physical and spiritual encounters with rivers develop our sensibility and mindedness for the long view and at the same time enhance our agency in the present facing the climate urgencies?
Conscious rituals, stories and parables, everyday actions and practices of spending time in/on/with rivers are collected, observed, invented and reflected upon in aesthetic experiences that can contribute to transformative concepts and senses of time such as long-term scales, deep time, spiral time and dealing with uncertainty.
Keywords: more-than-human temporalities, decentering, interdependencies, speculative imagination, animism, deceleration, hydrofeminism, rewilding, long view