The construction and operation of buildings leads to the consumption, evaporation and pollution of water in a variety of ways and has a direct impact both locally in the neighbourhood and globally on the earth system. The workshop “Built with Water - Anthropocene Interdependencies ” brings together perspectives from art, science and practice to discuss the complex relationships between water as a resource, ecosystem and habitat and contemporary spatial practices. The day's programme is divided into three sections consisting of joint readings, an interactive workshop and a concluding lecture. The day will be led by architecture scholar Sabine Hansmann (HCU Hamburg) and art historian Friederike Schäfer (FU Berlin), with media theorist Léa Perraudin (HU Berlin) and artist Sohorab Rabbey (HFBK Hamburg) in collaboration with Weronika Yuan and with contributions from students at HafenCity University Hamburg.
1–3 pm Readings (in German and English) HCU Hamburg students read excerpts from their own material Stories about selected building materials and their interdependencies with water.
3.30–5.30 pm Unarchiving Landscape: Line, Space, River Workshop with Sohorab Rabbey (in English) Within the scope of the workshop we will dive deep into the perception of a landscape not as an inert and static ground subjected to human agency, but as operating from a dynamic social structure and in response to the extractivist practices of colonialism. Addressing the malleability of land and water; their impact on legislation systems; we will try to understand how colonial archives and infrastructural blueprints (নীলনকশা) came to determine the place, space and river in relation to architecture and vegetal agencies. With an early Nineteen century photographic and archive generating technique, namely ‘Cyanotype’ we will revisit how different modes of ‘infrastructures’ control the water bodies and affect the ecology and climate.
The event is a cooperation with HafenCity University Hamburg, the Department of Architecture, Space and Society (represented by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sabine Hansmann, Weronika Yuan) and the Department of Landscape Architecture and Planning (Prof. Antje Stokman, Katarina Bajc, Sebastian Ballan, Jenny Ohlenschlager, Stefan Kreutz, Flavio Mancuso), as well as Dr. Friederike Schäfer (EXC 2020 „Temporal Communities. Doing Literature in the Global Perspective,“ FU Berlin).
The event is part of the supporting programme of the exhibition “Water Pressure: Designing for the Future”. As always, the open space and the event are accessible free of charge.
