Year of participation

2024

Rhine river rehearsal – reimagining a river

Rhine river rehearsal is an artistic research journey by Loom, engaging with the Rhine as a complex and ever-changing environment that is both affected by and contributing to a rapidly changing climate. During 5 days from 1–5 September, the interdisciplinary group will follow and deviate from the river using five different lenses and research methods, while engaging with the multitude of communities occupying its (past and future) banks, its soil, water and non-human inhabitants, and approaching its currents and stories of ongoing human hubris, as well as counter-narratives that imagine the future of the Rhine river otherwise.
Today, with an increasing frequency of devastating floods and extended periods of severe drought, attributed to climate change, we are forced to reposition ourselves vis-a-vis the mental image and lived reality of the Rhine river. Recent proposals for walls and levees, floodscapes, rain gardens and other water management and retention techniques will likely not prepare us for the extreme circumstances we will encounter in the coming years. It is about time to rethink our relationship with (a lack of) water, or wetness, and generate images and ideas beyond the more traditional representations of rivers, such as maps and diagrams. During the Rhine river rehearsal we will test and develop a diversity of methods and tools that help us capture the Rhine in all its messy, unpredictable vitality, not containing but facilitating its radical fluidity.  

During the five days, Loom will challenge the notion of the river, questioning dichotomies between land and water, center and periphery and urban and rural, a multiplicity of languages that surround the river – from Rheinromantik to Rheinbegradigung – as well as past and future floodings and boundaries of the Rhein. Meanwhile, they will turn to existing artistic practices and methodologies approaching the river, such as soundwalks, or acoustic ecology methods (inspired by a.o. Annea Lockwood, and Lasse-Mark Riek). 

The rehearsal journey will continue in fall in Amsterdam, at and with the Goethe-Institut Niederlande and LASP (Rietveld), as well as in Merzenich (Hambach mine, one of the future Rhine bassins) as part of the Borderlands Residencies programme. 

The project is a collaboration between Loom and the Lectorate Art & Spatial Praxis (Gerrit Rietveld Academie), Goethe-Institut Niederlande and Borderland Residencies, who support the project.