Opportunity: Pantha Rhei on the Rhine

“Pantha Rhei on the Rhine” is an artistic and scientific research project designed to 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 industrial, cultural, and ecological systems conditioned by international politics, histories, and economics. 

The project will commission narrative sound art works about different parts of the River Rhine. They are composed in part with a sound library compiled from the river itself. The sound artworks can be considered as radio plays. They will be played in sequence at the listening sessions to tell a story of the Rhine at each of our partnering institutions the Museum Rehmann in Laufenberg, Switzerland (headwaters of the Rhine),  the University of Antwerp Ecosphere’s Mesodrome, a large-scale river simulation facility (the abstracted middle), _V2 Lab for Unstable in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (end of the Rhine into the English Channel and Atlantic Ocean).

“Pantha Rhei on the Rhine” focuses on fostering a techno-poetics that meaningfully links scientific data with poetics drawn from art and art history. Pantha Rhei  is Heraclitus’ ancient dictum that “everything flows,” summarizing his famous fragment that “no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” 

The production of the commissioned artworks will be supported with scientific input from University of Antwerp’s Ecosphere group and artistic input from Studio Haseeb Ahmed. 

Submissions are due on Dec 20 2024. More information is available on the link below:

More information