The artist will present her work, and also her new book entitled Mouth of the Waterway about the role of photography in sewage systems. Based on her research into water infrastructure, she will also guide us through the paths that water takes as it flows through the PLATO building.

In her exhibition seeping in, Alina Schmuch explores the relationship between bodies, the landscape, and high-tech infrastructure in the context of ecological and social challenges. The bath appears as an interface where technology and the body meet, and where notions of the public and the intimate, of visibility and invisibility, are continually negotiated.

Much like the physical side of the Internet and digital processes – server rooms, fiber-optic cables, and data flows – the sewage system remains hidden in our everyday lives. Yet there is a direct line of connection between our bodies, the bathroom, and the infrastructure of an entire city.

As part of the public program, Schmuch will launch her new artist book Mouth of the Waterway, in which she curates archival photographs of sewage systems alongside new operational imagery produced by inspection robots. Following the launch, she will give a guided tour through the exhibition and the PLATO building, inviting us to sharpen our view for the interconnected ways in which water moves through the architecture. During this field trip, she will be accompanied by PLATO’s building manager, Radim Tomašovský.

Alina Schmuch is a German artist working with moving image and photography, exploring the relationship between visual media and reality through artistic publications and video installations. In recent years, Schmuch has focused intensively on the theme of water infrastructures as sites where technology, the body, and the environment intersect. She studied Media Art at HfG Karlsruhe and was a fellow at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. Her work has been presented in exhibitions and screenings including at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Urbane Künste Ruhr, Akademie der Künste, Sonic Acts, Rupert, and at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale in collaboration with the collective Forensic Architecture. She was part of the artistic research project Hydromedia, the residency programme Alterlife, and is currently a participant of BPA // Berlin Programme for Artists. Among other awards, she has received the Visual Arts work stipend of the Berlin Senate and the MAK Schindler Scholarship in Los Angeles.