Liquid Becomings
Rather than a traditional pavilion in the Venice Biennale - this is a new form of ‘pavilion’; travelling, dispersed and with a pan-European focus.
It consists of four boats journeying on four key European rivers, each with a crew of artists researching, exchanging and creating while travelling. Each boat will connect with local experts, activists, artists, communities and people they meet along the way to come together and share conversations, to explore and imagine the stories that will be told by the Europe of tomorrow. The work will form the basis for pavilion and a three day festival in Lisbon in November 2024.
PRODUCED BY: espaco agora Co-curators: Bojan Djordjev, Siniša Ilić, Laura Kalauz, Alfredo Martins, Maria Magdalena Kozłowska, Naomi Russell and Olga UzikaevaRole: Artist & Co-curatorLocation: Cross-EuropeanCommissioner: European Cultural Foundation (EU)ArtForm: Boat journeys and Pavilion - mixed media
“The task is to become capable, with each other in all of our bumptious kinds, of response. […] The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present. Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places.”
Future Imaginings
Liquid Becomings will make space for a future imagining of Europe by celebrating the liminal state, immersing into the not-knowing, coming to terms with the ignorance and building an environment for new orders to emerge. Liquid Becomings will leave solid ground, and redirect the gaze onto the yet-to-be-shaped.
At the centre of Liquid Becomings is a travelling pavilion and radically networked stage in the form of four small boats each with a crew of artists. These mobile and nomadic parts will sail through four different rivers connecting Europe’s many and varied territories. This net of rivers is a metaphor and a means by which we will explore the neuro-system of Europe.
Rivers should not only be considered natural borders, but also the force of nature that disregards political borders. Throughout the journey this travelling pavilion will connect strongly with nature and its rhythm which is more dynamic, precarious and unpredictable than man-made thoroughfares especially at this time of radical climate emergency.
Fluid Connections
Manifested as boats, our mobile pavilion will sail four boats through four different rivers: Danube, Rhine, Vistula and Tagus in September 2024. Each boat becomes a platform for an expression, in which artists, academics, citizens and experts are brought together in a travelling debate. Collectively the boats will imagining alternative modes of togetherness.
The rivers will be our inspiration. Rivers have longevity. They are rooted in the landscape. Their stories, folklores, myths have inspired European identity and connection in new ways throughout the ages. Liquid Belongings will create a new chapter.
Credit: Illustration by Siniša Ilić