streams of permeation in a thickening swamp
Streams of permeation in a thickening swamp was a three-day workshop through which we shared exercises to attune to Berlin’s hardened and silenced waters, reflecting on the overheard relationships embedded within their errant streams and their socio-political dimensions, including water access, weaponization, and solidarity.
We developed interdisciplinary listening, recording, and writing dimensions, culminating in a radio walk.
An urban swamp, a multilayered basin absorbing sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, holds bustling streets and cacophonic skies. A homogeneous substance hardens regulatory systems, solidifying oppressive infrastructures. Compressed mud, once annelids and mollusks, is pierced by leaking echoes catalyzed by viscous amalgams defying absorption; it trembles underneath. Underground rivers are sculpted by humming stories smeared with roots, rocks, sand, and clay. Dynamic, they ooze as aqueous traces; what stories do they echo?
Built on a swamp, Berlin’s underground waters and aquifers bear the marks of industrialization, war, reconstruction, and ecological change. Chemically, these waters are described as hard due to their high levels of calcium and magnesium due to the city’s geological layers of limestone and chalk.
