Water is at the heart of this exhibit––not just as a physical element but as metaphor for bodily and environmental experience. The artist examines the relationship between bodies, the landscape, and high-tech infrastructure in the context of ecological and social challenges.
Alina Schmuch approaches aquatic ecosystems and technical networks as if they were living organisms, intermeshed with human bodies and social structures. Through site-specific video installations, she studies processes in waterlogged fields in the context of hydrological connectivity––from scenarios of how the landscape adapts and water-movement models to large-scale anti-flood measures. Sewers and bathrooms appear as interior spaces where bodily intimacy intersects with public infrastructure, while harbouring vast microbial communities that connect people with their environment in a constant cycle. The exhibit enables us to glimpse not only the technical and bodily dimensions of aquatic networks but also their meaning in social and environmental contexts––through technologies exploring the border between the wet and the dry.
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 participant of BPA // Berlin Programme for Artists. Among other awards she received the Visual Arts work stipend of the Berlin Senate and the MAK Schindler Scholarship in Los Angeles.
Main Partners: Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Moravian-Silesian Region
Partner of the exhibition: The Czech-German Future Fund
Acknowledgement of cooperation: JAF HOLZ spol. s r.o., Ferona, a.s., BALSHOP