Wie bauen Wir Brücken über unruhiges Wasser?
A series of artistic actions in the public realm of Rostock and the Ostsee coast
Across the Summer of 2021
Curated by collective East of Elsewhere
Supported by Hanse-und-Universitätsstadt Rostock
Read the full programme and text (in German) here
The sea is a site of the past, present and future. Through its methodic motions that carry many memories, change is taking place. Shorelines move, aquatic ecosystems struggle, ships transport bodies and goods across the water, but for some, routes are declared forbidden.
What can we learn from the memories held in each ripple and wave? What troubled waters of the past and present require urgent change for the future? Can we find new methodologies of connection that can inspire such changes through the spirit of the sea?
This project is made up of a programme of artistic actions taking place in the public realm across the city of Rostock and at the Ostsee coast. The different presentations will explore methods of alliance through public-centred artistic gestures with the aim to bring unexpected audiences together through an enquiry into the sea as both a physical and poetic entity.
‘I say the sea is overwhelmed by its waves. Breathe into it your thoughts, and it will remember you.’
Etel Adnan ‘Sea & Fog’
Read reflective texts on the project here
Action #1
Freiluft Austellung ‘Schwarze Streifen auf blau’
with Sophia Domagala
Sophia Domagala started painting lines in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic—reaching into histories of abstraction with a gesture that is physical, meditative and expansive. For this Freiluft Ausstellung she shows 3 new paintings in a Rostock Kleingarten.
Action #2
Film screening with works:
Deep Down Tidal by Tabita Rezaire
how to break a horizon: a memory as retold by the sum of its residue by Kearra Amaya Goppee
Der Tag einer Seefrau an Bord by Nadja Abt
The Line (All this can be seen anywhere) an homage to Barbara Kozłowska by Agnieszka Lasota
Action #3
Reading circles at the beach with texts including The Waves by Virginia Woolf and Sea&Fog by Etel Adnan
Action #4
The late Polish artist Barbara Kozłowska’s (1940-2008) ongoing performance piece, Borderline, consisted of tracing a line from East to West across the globe by way of minimal interventions in the landscape. She considered this a fundamentally open project, often collaborating with other artists and inviting others to pick it up in the future. As part of the programme, a continuation and recreation was organised of Kozłowska’s characteristic sand mounds coloured with natural pigments, which mark the Borderline where land and water meet.
*Special thanks to Camila Mchugh, June Galerie & Arton Foundation for bringing this work to the project
Action #5
alle Erinnerungen fließen ins Meer (und wieder raus) - Performance by Adi Liraz
In this performance walk, an action of remembrance takes place through the interweaving of words by three German-speaking female poets: #SemraErtan, #MayAyim and #RoseAusländer.
The walk starts at the sea and continues until the Sunflower House in Rostock’s Lichtenhagen district, the site of the 1992 racial riots in the city.
ACTION #6
Workshop in collaboration with Art Hive from Rostock Hilft e.V. Together participants discussed the ways in which the sea can be a site of connection and division. These thoughts were then expressed as paintings on rocks collected from the coast. The finished paintings were placed in a circle in a Rostock park and left for the public to view.
