Fluid Boundaries

Fluid Boundaries: The Interplay of Water, Art, Science, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems brings together participants from South Africa, Brazil and Switzerland in a transdisciplinary collaboration situated at the intersection of art, science and indigenous knowledge with a strong focus on decolonial practice.

The project creates a common space to explore water – and the flow of knowledges, wisdoms and practices around this life-sustaining element – the programme integrates questions and methods from different disciplinary and cultural perspectives. To interrogate the relationships to water and create sustainable, equitable access, the project implements process-driven, 3-month art-science residencies in research labs, followed by an intense 2-week development workshop in Lugano, Switzerland.

Organised by the artists-in-labs program and supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, the project creates a creative environment for eye-to-eye transdisciplinary sharing. Dr Tebogo George Mahashe, collaborating via —defunct context, serves as a scientific partner and the local indigenous knowledge convenor to mentor, question, and support the process. The selected residency artists navigating this framework include South Africa and Swiss artists’ Kamil Hassim and Ian Purnell, alongside Carla Maldonado (Brazil) and Michael Azkoul (Switzerland).