Surface Tension. Tracing Socio-Material Relations Through Urban Waters

What allows one to float? In the evening lecture »Surface Tension. Tracing Socio-Material Relations Through Urban Waters« that concluded the workshop Built with Water – Anthropocene Interdependencies, Léa Perraudin engaged the physical phenomenon of surface tension to delve into socio-material relations that emerge in the Venetian lagoon. As a city that thinks every aspect of itself through the water, the liquid grounds of Venice hold potential for frictional and careful encounters alike.

How to move through a space that has agreed on precarious modes of supply and disposal, of spatial scarcity and temporal submergence? Venice has challenged its inhabitants and visitors to act and to sense otherwise while undeniably and irreversibly turning itself into everything that comes and goes with being one of the top destinations of globalized tourism. Who lives here, who walks here, who dares to swim, who needs to be carried?

During this evening, we held space to collaboratively explore the notion of surface tension through the waters of Hamburg and in the likelihood of spillage.

The evening lecture was part of the supporting program of the exhibition Water Pressure: Designing for the Future. The event was free of charge.
https://www.mkg-hamburg.de/en/events/surface-tension