Floating Fathers in Your Water Our Water exhibition, U10 Art Space Belgrade, RS. Photo: Deep Time Agency

This work was developed in collaboration with Wouter Osterholt and within Deep Time Agency. 

Thanks to Katharina Grün, Hanna Weber, Daniel Vollmer (Delphi_space), Sanda Kalebić, Jana Jovašević, Maša Obradović (U10 Artspace) and Doris Götz (BBK wood workshop Berlin)

︎ Visit Your Water Our Water Exhibition, U10 Art Space Belgrade 


     

(2024) Installation, wood carving, performance in public space

Floating Fathers has been developed in the context of the trinational Your Water Our Water exhibition cycle, that took place throughout 2024 in three art spaces along the Danube River. The carved models in the exhibition are based on original sculptures of industrialists, engineers, and statesmen who have worked on the modernization and industrialization of the Danube, making the river fit for transport over water and hydro-energy. Many of these people are well-known historical figures, who’s legacies are honoured and remembered through monuments and busts standing in the towns and cities along the Danube.

During their performance at U10 Art Space, Deep Time Agency took the public on a guided tour through the city centre of Belgrade and down to the Danube river, accompanied by a larger scale model of one of their floating fathers: István Széchenyi  (1791–1860). During the walk, the public acquired insights into the history of the Danube river, learning more about its construction history.

The project, that is also on show at the exhibition, critically commemorates 19th century industrialists, engineers, and statesmen that played an important role in the cultivation and canalisation of the Danube river. While the taming of the river was seen as a heroic deed just hundred years ago, nowadays we face the direct and indirect consequences of these historical figures’ actions, and many ecological projects concerned with “re-wildering” the Danube are currently under way. As part of these re-wildering projects dead trees are placed in the riverbed to restore a deep time image of the Danube. With their project, DTA thinks about the role of the sculptures of the historical statesmen in these practices, reuniting them with the contemporary river in new and exciting ways.