Hydromedia: Seeing with Water collects the results of a collaborative artistic program, organized in 2023 and 2024 by the Royal Academy of Arts, Antwerp (KASK), the University of Arts and Design, Karlsruhe (HfG), and the Utrecht University of Arts (HKU) and co-funded by Creative Europe. By using water as a source of inspiration as well as a tool to work with, the twelve artists who were selected through open calls developed new art works. These works invite us to relate to water in a multisensory way, and by extension the wider ecologies connected to this crucial medium for life. Rather than remaining at a distance, as exemplified by more conventional documentary approaches, Hydromedia aims at closer forms of contact, inspired by multidisciplinary collaborations. Throughout the project ecologists, scientists, water engineers and nature conservationists have entered the conversation. Through lectures, field trips, workshops, three local exhibitions, and this final publication, Hydromedia shares not only the artistic outcomes but also ‘manuals’ written by the artists, inviting the reader to engage with artistic processes.
This publication contains traces of the various activities that we organized in this project’s three stages: the residencies in and around the cities of Antwerp (April 2023), Utrecht (October 2023) and Karlsruhe (April 2024), some conversations between scientists and artists, presentations by philosophers or activists, and the local exhibitions and workshops that followed each working period. Finally, it also contains manuals written by the artists explaining (parts of) their research process, so the public could experience firsthand how to engage with the medium of water in a variety of artistic approaches, some which will make you wet, others which invite to relate to water in a poetic key.
Edited by Steven Humblet, Inge Henneman, Taco Hidde Bakker and Vanessa Bosch
Graphic design by Bruno Jacoby & Johanna Schäfer
Texts by Steven Humblet, Taco Hidde Bakker, Inge Henneman, Vanessa Bosch, René ten Bos and Matthias Bruhn
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