Foto: Ina Weise
Verläufe / Transformale, Rechenzentrum Potsdam, 2023
Watery mapping is an artistic research project dedicated to water as a climatic indicator in performative interventions. The former data processing center, which as a statistics authority stored housing and cadastral data, becomes the starting point for an emotional and aesthetic analysis of urban space and its assumable transformation processes. Plausible and speculative scenarios of the past and future are translated into approachable, human gestures through artistic actions. The focus is only on scientific findings, but also on the aesthetic imaginability and the emotional handling of the latter. In the process, the different times accumulate in a "watery"
map in which the future and past dissolve into one another.
In three performative interventions at the beginning, middle and end of the exhibition period, the transformation of the urban space between deep-time scales and human temporality is made tangible through subtly absurd actions. Time and the resulting transformation of water define the framework of the three long-duration performances: Flooding (The Old City Canal), Irrigation (The New Plantation) & Melt (The Weather Vane)
Melt (The Weather Vane), Durational performance, 2023, Potsdam © Image: Ina Weise
Irrigation (The New Plantation), Durational performance, 2023, Potsdam © Image: Marcus Große
Flooding (The Old City Canal), Durational performance, 2023, Potsdam © Images: Marcus Große