Project:
“Pantha Rhei on the Rhine” is an artistic and scientific research project conceived of and organized by Studio Haseeb Ahmed with the support of Pro Helvetia. It will commission three narrative sound artworks as radio plays. Each addressing the beginning, middle, or end of the river.
Rooted in Heraclitus’ dictum “everything flows,” Pantha Rhei on the Rhine is a transdisciplinary project uniting an international consortium of artistic and scientific partners. It marks a shift in Haseeb Ahmed’s practice—from working with air and water as artistic media to organizing around them. Through commissioned narrative sound works presented along the Rhine, the project explores the river’s industrial, ecological, and cultural entanglements through a techno-poetic lens.
The artworks are supported by a sound library collected along the River Rhine and presented in listening sessions at each of our partnering institutions of the Museum Rehmann, at the headwaters of the Rhine in Laufenberg, Switzerland, V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media, at the end of the Rhine in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the University of Antwerp Ecosphere’s Mesodrome, a large-scale river simulation facility.
The artworks should express the latent metaphors and materials carried by the River Rhine. As one of Europe’s largest and most important waterways, the Rhine features massive complexity of enmeshed industry and ecological systems conditioned by international politics, histories, and economics. We ask, how can we read the river to provide new perspectives on urgent ecological questions that major rivers face globally?
This project is supported by Synergies grant from Pro Helvetia (Switzerland) together with Museum Rehmann (Switzerland), V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media (Netherlands), and the University of Antwerp’s Mesodrome (Belgium).