How can we learn together with water?

What does a symbiotic way of life with water feel like?

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In collaboration with Spreepark Art Space, the “On Water PARCOURS” invites visitors to experience water as a connecting element between bodies, landscapes, infrastructures, and forms of knowledge. Based on the concept of hydrofeminism, coined by Astrida Neimanis, water is understood not as a resource but as a medium of relationships—permeable, circulating, and essential to both human and non-human life. Hydrofeminism conceives of bodies not as closed units, but as porous systems in constant exchange with their environment. Water permeates cells, soils, infrastructures, and ecosystems, connecting the inside and the outside, the human and the more-than-human.

On the banks of the Spree, in the former amusement park, and around the Spreepark Art Space in the Eierhäuschen, these connections can be experienced firsthand. At the same time, it becomes clear how vulnerable urban water systems are—shaped by climate change, soil sealing, regulation, and interventions such as the Mühlendamm lock. Here, water is revealed not only as an ecological system but also as a social, political, and cultural foundation of life.

As part of the BUA event series “On Water PARCOURS” and the international residency “Urban Streams,” the program brings together Berlin-based water research, international artistic perspectives, and urban society in a shared exchange. Researchers from the Berlin University Alliance, artists from the Urban Streams residency, and other guests will explore together how knowledge about water can be not only conveyed scientifically, but also artistically investigated, physically experienced, and collectively shared.

In a full-day program, knowledge about water becomes an immediate, shared experience that connects artists, scientists, and the public, bringing them into a dialogue—including with the water itself. In the process, forms of collaborative learning and knowledge exchange beyond purely discursive approaches are explored. Through perception, movement, and listening—including the sounds of the Spree—this knowledge becomes sensually tangible.

The program opens with the new interactive concert performance “PEACES SO FAR” by FrauVonDa, which explores the Oder as a border river, a space of memory, and a place of possibilities. In a format called “senSONICtalk©,” which combines art, science, and discourse, the performance traces the multifaceted stories of the river as a habitat, a political arena, and a place of conflict and connection.

Following this, the Urban-Streams-Residents will present their projects from the Open Studio Program, developed for the Spreepark Art Residency. During a panel discussion, the artists will offer insights into their working processes.

In the participatory discussion “Methods of Care for Rivers,” researchers and artists will engage with the audience to discuss alternative research practices of “caring for water” through listening, storytelling, mapping, and swimming as sensory methods of knowledge production. Participants include Laura Betancur Alarcón (HU Berlin), who researches hydro-social relationships and collective freshwater knowledge; Kate Donovan, who researches amphibious listening and the soundscapes of the Spree; Anna Neuhaus (TU Berlin), who reflects on mapping as a method of more-than-human landscape research, and Isabel Bredenbröker, who, as part of the exhibition “On Water” at the Humboldt Labor, explores swimming and sound as water-related research methods. The audience will be actively engaged in the discussion via a digital platform.

Accompanying the discussion sessions in the historic dance hall of the Spreepark Art Space, a diverse program of workshops, guided tours, sound works, installations, and family-oriented formats unfolds both indoors and outdoors. It invites visitors to explore water with all their senses—listening, drawing, researching, and engaging in shared exchange.

In this way, participants in the participatory mapping workshop led by Anna Neuhaus (TU Berlin)—through perception, collecting traces, reading, and drawing—can attune themselves to the wet processes of the Spreepark’s landscapes and engage with the unknown, the fragile, and the fragmentary.

Other outdoor program highlights include the family workshop “LuckyLachs Course for Children (and Adults Are Welcome to Join)” by Léon Gross and Jakob Kukula from Symbiotic Lab, the guided tour of the Spreepark construction site “Collected Raindrops on a Wild Ride Through the Spreepark” with Jana Engel and Heidrun Bäumker, as well as the hydrofeminist walk with Sarah Wenzinger.

In addition to works by Urban Streams artists Marie-Louise Jones, Karel Kopliments, Hele Okkonen, and Fionn Timmins, the audience will encounter a site-specific audiovisual installation by FrauVonDa, a livestream of the Spree by Kate Donovan, a sound piece by Isabel Bredenbröker in collaboration with Kirsty Wissing, and an interactive work by Anna Kubelik.

The day will conclude with a get-together featuring drinks and finger food starting at 6 p.m.

The program will take place in English and German.

Note regarding travel from 1:30 PM to 8:00 PM due to the Berlin Triathlon around Eierhäuschen and Plänterwald:

If you're arriving between 1:30 PM and 8:00 PM, we recommend taking the S-Bahn: S Treptower Park (S8, S9, S85, S41/42), approx. 35-minute walk through Treptower Park along the Spree, or S Plänterwald (S8, S9, S85), approx. 20-minute walk through Plänterwald. Or by bike—parking is available on-site. Travel by bus line 265 via Neue Krugallee / Dammweg is not possible during this time. For more information on routes and closures, visit: https://www.berlin-triathlon.de/Service/Anwohnerinfos/

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Program in the historic ballroom of the Spreepark Art Space (Eierhäuschen)

Please register for the individual program items via this link.

1:00–1:10 PM | Welcome

1:15–2:15 PM | FrauVonDa – PEACES SO FAR

Language: German with English segments

PEACES SO FAR is an interactive concert performance by FrauVonDa that explores the Oder as a border river, a space of memory, and a place of possibilities. By combining art, science, and discourse, the performance traces the multifaceted stories of the river as a habitat, a political stage, and a site of both conflict and connection.

Developed in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, the project brings together Czech, German, and Polish artists, biologists, historians, and philosophers to reflect on war, ecology, and reconciliation.

Through concert, dialogue, and collective reflection, “PEACES SO FAR” invites us to rethink the river not as a border, but as a fragile lifeline and a unifying force.

2:45–4:15 PM | Artist Talk: Urban Streams Residents

Language: English

The international artists of the Urban Streams Residency offer in-depth insights into their artistic practice.

The focus is on an exchange about their research processes on the topic of urban waters, as well as an accompanying discussion of the works presented as part of the Open Studios. A discursive dialogue on the intersection of ecology, urban space, and art.

4:30–6:00 PM | Methods of Care for Rivers – Participatory Audience Discussion

Language: English

This moderated discussion is dedicated to alternative research practices by artists and scientists. The focus is on sensory methods of “caring for water”—through collaborative mapping, listening, storytelling, and swimming. The audience will be actively engaged in the conversation via a digital platform. With:

Laura Betancur Alarcón (HU Berlin) – Narrating
“Bridging scientific knowledge with community expertise – An interdisciplinary approach for freshwater”
Her research examines hydro-social relations, rural ways of life, and social inequalities in the context of climate extremes, biodiversity loss, energy infrastructures, and armed conflicts. She combines approaches from human geography, sustainability science, and environmental anthropology.

Kate Donovan – Listening
“Amphibious Listening / Flows of Water & Electromagnetism”
Building on the concept of amphibious—a life between different worlds—Kate Donovan explores underwater listening in the Spree as a way to immerse oneself in aquatic environments. Through a live radio broadcast, a collective listening experience emerges that makes water and electromagnetism tangible as diffuse, shared, and constantly shifting forces.

Anna Neuhaus (TU Berlin) – Mapping
“Notice, Weave, Repeat – Re-representing Spreepark’s Patchy Wetness Collectively”
From the perspective of urban design and landscape architecture, Anna Neuhaus researches mapping methods that make visible non-human relationships and landscape developments. In her presentation, she reflects on mapping as a research method and shares the results of the preceding workshop.

Isabel Bredenbröker – Swimming
“Swimming and sound as water research methodologies”
Isabel Bredenbröker explores swimming practices as a method for understanding social and moral attributions regarding human bodies and bodies of water. Together with Dr. Kirsty Wissing, she developed the sound piece Imagining Underwater Futures, which connects water experiences from Germany and Australia.

6:00 PM – 7:00 PM | Get-together

The day concludes with a get-together featuring drinks and finger food.

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Workshops & Guided Tours (Indoor and Outdoor)

2:15 PM–5:00 PM | LuckyLachs Parcours with Léon Gross & Jakob Kukula

Language: German

Salmon used to swim through the Spree—until dams and weirs blocked their path. In this hands-on workshop, you’ll design shimmering fish scales, become part of a school of salmon, and traverse a course from the river to the sea and back. Predators and man-made obstacles lurk along the way. Will you make it back to your home river? Slip into the scales of a migratory fish—and experience what the world feels like from its perspective.

A two-part obstacle course for children and adults:

2:15–3:15 PM Part 1 | Indoors

Creating fish scales together.

Starting at 3:15 PM Part 2 | Outside

Movement and discovery course (one run through the course takes approx. 20 min.).

2:30–4:30 PM | Anna Neuhaus – Notice, Weave, Repeat – Re-representing Spreepark’s Patchy Wetness Collectively

Participants: 15–20 people

Language: English (with some German)

Anna Neuhaus, an urban designer with a background in landscape architecture, researches and experiments with mappings that explore more-than-human connections and landscape formations.

In the workshop, we will tune into the wet processes of Spreepark’s landscapes.

We will sense, collect traces, read, and draw — engaging with the unknown, the fragile, and the patchy. All forms of contribution — amateur and skilled alike — are welcome and valued, shaping a situated and pluralistic mapping process.

Together, we may be surprised by the richness and density of watery connections, from the smallest micro-relations to expansive, large-scale entanglements.

In this mapping workshop, participants explore the wet processes of Spreepark’s landscapes. Through perception, collecting traces, reading, and drawing, collective mappings of more-than-human relationships emerge.

All forms of participation—regardless of experience or prior knowledge—are welcome.

2:30–3:45 PM and 4:00–5:15 PM | Jana Engel and Heidrun Bäumker – Tour of the Spreepark construction site

“Collected Raindrops on a Wild Ride Through the Spreepark”

Participants: max. 15 people

The future Spreepark will feature sustainable rainwater and groundwater management – but what does that actually mean? On this tour, we follow raindrops on their wild journey through the park: from the “Grand Canyon” whitewater ride, with a glimpse into the park’s history, to the collection, storage, and irrigation systems of the future. Jana Engel, an artist, and Heidrun Bäumker, from the Spreepark’s Grün Berlin planning team, will discuss how water is conceived, channeled, and used in the park.

5:00–6:00 PM | Fluid Identities and Queer Ecologies – Hydrofeminist Walk with Sarah Wenzinger

Language: spoken German; spontaneous translation into English is available

The body of water, the water vein, the river is not a binary entity, not a fixed object, not merely part of the landscape, but flows within us and around us. The aquatic network, the current, the river’s course carries memories, flows across borders, and resists fixed categories of ownership, identity, and control. Water is a form of fluid knowledge from which we can learn to understand the world around us differently. On this walk, we will join the river in questioning conventional systems of order and, through artistic impulses, soften and sediment external and internal notions of identity, connecting them with the Spree.

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Artistic Encounters

Open Studio: Urban Streams

Insight into the artistic processes, works, and installations of the Urban Streams resident artists Fionn Timmins, Hele Okkonen, Karel Koplimets, and Marie-Louise Jones. Location: Eierhäuschen, 1st floor.

FrauVonDa: PEACES SO FAR

Site-specific sound and video installation.

Location: next to the café entrance.

Kate Donovan: Amphibious Listening / Flows of Water & Electromagnetism

Live audio broadcast from the Spree, immersing the audience in real time in the acoustic worlds of the river.

Isabel Bredenbröker with Dr. Kirsty Wissing: Imagining Underwater Futures

Sound installation (approx. 15 minutes) for headphones. The work combines water-related experiences from Germany and Australia into a shared acoustic vision of the future.

Location: at the registration desk.

Anna Kubelik: (In)Finite // UNESCO

Sculptural work that is activated at the conclusion of the discussion round and accompanies the transition into the joint get-together.