Wed 20 March
15:30–19:00
Book Presentations Maud van den Beuken & Julie Patarin-Jossec — FLUID INTERDISCIPLINARITIES FESTIVAL

RADIUS is pleased to partner with IHE Delft for the FLUID INTERDISCIPLINARITIES FESTIVAL in two events: two book presentations on Wednesday 20 March, and the symposium THE HOUSE OF RIVERS on Thursday 21 March.

Like water, interdisciplinarity flows across borders, takes different forms or meanings, and therefore cannot be constrained in rigid structures and definitions. The International Festival FLUID INTERDISCIPLINARITIES wishes to reflect and engage with the diversity and plurality of interdisciplinary practices in water research and education, through workshops, book presentations, symposium and artistic performances. This festival brings together long-term university partners of IHE Delft from all around the world and aims at promoting new collaborations the theme of inter- and trans-disciplinarity with artists, museums and curators. Critical and creative social scientists, hydrologists, natural scientists, artists, activists, and water professionals who are experimenting with diverse ways to do interdisciplinarity, will share and reflect on their experiences, and hopefully learn from each other.

TITLES Where the river is
— Book presentation by Maud van den Beuken
16:00 — 17:00

During this event artist and fieldworker Maud van den Beuken explores today’s definitions of the Meuse river and its water management, while narrating her new book TITLES Where the river is in a lecture performance. While reflecting on the Western ideas within water management, that aim to keep the river within its marked banks, she seeks to give voice to the river by both their artistic and scientific toolsets. TITLES Where the river is archives Maud’s notes, sketches, preparations, registrations and thought experiments, which have sedimented over one year. During this time, she did an yearlong residency at the Jan van Eyck in Maastricht.

The Thread of Water: Ethnography, Photography, and Feminist Ecologies
— Book presentation by Julie Patarin-Jossec
17:30 — 18:30

The Thread of Water is a reflexive wandering in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea. The photographs investigate the colonial politics of the underseas through the eeriness of subaquatic weightlessness and light contrasts: artefacts and bodies are altered, if not disincarnated, in undefined waterscapes that build a narrative of dispossession and perdition. From digital to analog photography, including thermal imagery, the collection assembled for this book questions how movement can transcend landscapes to embrace affect. But, more than anything, The Thread of Water is an intimate narrative about trauma and queerness that navigates different forms of storytelling (photographs, drawings, poetry, fieldwork notes) to explore the in-betweens, the coexistent multiplicities, and the pervasiveness of liberatory praxis.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
⌀ Maud van den Beuken characterises her artistic practice as an adventurer and fieldworker by an investigative attitude in which she measures, scans and maps the landscape on a 1:1 scale. Over the past six years, she has been specifically studying rivers and their water management. By following rivers on foot but also working with various experts such as ministries, ports and dredging contractors, she has been implementing poetics within the field of water management. Several rivers have been the focus so far such as the Kaveri River in India, the Mississippi River in the United States, the Elbe in Germany and the Meuse in the Netherlands. Her work positions itself both within the formal art context through sculptures, installations, maps, audio walks and videos, but also explores contexts beyond such as cartographic archives, public spaces, collaborations with municipalities, scientists, dredging companies and universities. Her work has been exhibited internationally at a.o. EENWERK Gallery in Amsterdam (NL), United Nations Water Conference 2023 in New York (US), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam (NL), Jan van Eyck in Maastricht (NL), EIGHT/ΤΟ ΟΧΤΩ in Athens (GR) and the Special Collections department of Utrecht University Library (NL).
⌀ As visual sociologist, Julie Patarin-Jossec’s practice spans ethnography, queer theory, and environmental studies. Over the past nine years, their research has emphasised the role of technologies, artefacts, and scientific knowledge in the reproduction of colonialist and heteronormative systems of oppression, and research-creation as a form of liberatory scholarship. They are particularly interested in embodiment as a method of investigation and of knowledge transmission, which lead them to work with different media, e.g., experimental imagery, photography, filmmaking, and performance. Their latest outputs include the essay The Thread of Water: Ethnography, Photography, and Feminist Ecologies (Immaterial Books, 2024), the short film The Measurement (2023), and the article Can there be a feminist ethnography of the undersea? (Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 2024). They are a Fellow of the Explorers Club, the National Geographic Society, and the Royal Society of Arts.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
⌀ Date: Wednesday 21 of March 
⌀ Doors open: 15:30 – 16:00
⌀ Book presentations: 16:00 – 18:30
⌀ Drinks receptions: 18:30 – 19:00
⌀ Language: English
⌀ Free admission, R.S.V.P. required
⌀ Location: RADIUS Water Tower, Kalverbos 22
⌀ Please note that the location is not wheelchair accessible