Riverscapes and their Ecological Interconnections

Riverscapes and their Ecological Interconnections is the residency program curated by Lungomare for Situated Creative Practices for the Pluriverse (SIT-PLU), a Creative Europe Cooperation project addressing socio-ecological challenges through context-specific artistic interventions.

Drawing on the Zapatista concept of the pluriverse—“a world where many worlds fit”—the project embraces diverse ways of knowing and living, foregrounding buen vivir (social well-being), communal interdependence, and relationships between human and more-than-human entities.

get wet! Is the selected project for the first SIT-PLU Residency, starting in January 2026.
Proposed by the art collective WOOPS (Work On Outrageous Public Spaces), Hannes Gröblacher, Lilli Lička and Mira Samonig, the project engages with the riverscapes of Bolzano through the materiality of water and foresees a series of public actions to explore diverse ways of approaching, interpreting and inhabiting the riverscape as a microcosm of the planet.

get wet! will develop up to participatory, collaborative and performative activities in public spaces in Bolzano, each based on the exploration of a specific property of water. Each action is configured by matching a property of water with a distinct group and their involvement with water, whereby the water property comes to act as a fluid bridge for exchange.

The core material of the river is the water. The quantity, mineral composition, colour, temperature and hydrobiological status and other living and mineral components — from particles to alluvial wood, debris and boulders — shape and constitute the water. While water is often a spectre of the imagination – a reservoir of promises and a container for projections – focusing on its materiality brings other qualities to the fore: physical tangibility, multiformity and fluidity. The physical collective experience is fundamental as a basis upon which discussions are triggered and comparative knowledge is gained.

How wet do we get, how wet is wet, what do we get from getting wet, how long do our wet traces of the river last in the town square, how can we create new imaginaries with pouring images?

Based on these initial reflections on the materiality of water, the practitioners in residency begin their exploration aodpting a method characterised by actively employing humour, absurdity and irony as well as banality. These sentiments run through their shared practice and are used to cultivate a low-threshold atmosphere to get people involved, to encourage a climate of surprise as a moment of stepping out of routines and to actively work for instead of against something.