Planetary Confluences, a collaboration between Floating University, Salve Saracura, Ground Atlas and Labtek Apung and with MITRcollective / Les Gammares as part of the project “Designing with the Planet: connecting riparian zones of struggles”. 

Co-curator of the 2-days festival that took place in July 2024 (12+13) in Berlin.

How can we shape the future of the planet out of an activist-artistic-academic practice?
How can we confront climate change based on the hopes and struggles of the most affected communities?
How can we address profound ecological interconnectedness within contexts marked by persistent injustice, daily unpredictability, and rapid urban transformation?
How does the South design planetary futures?

These are questions resonating since 2022 within the network “Designing with the Planet. Connecting Riparian Zones of Struggles” (South Designs Initiative). The group has a planetary geometry, formed by transdisciplinary activists, artists, and academics from Labtek Apung from Jakarta, Ground Atlas, and Salve Saracura from São Paulo, and Floating University Berlin.

Confronted with degraded landscapes, toxic legacies of urbanization, resource exploitation, and historical injustices as sedimented in our city waterways and riparian ecosystems, we’ve collaboratively devised tactics and objects for planetary healing. Over the past two years, the group has together designed an infrastructure for mutual learning and mutual aid to exchange practical knowledge on water quality testing devices from Labtek Apung in Jakarta; counter-mapping and visualizing colonial legacies from Ground Atlas and Salve Saracura in São Paulo, and experimental forms of multispecies cohabitation at Floating University in Berlin.

After two years of intense correspondences, travels of river beings and inhabitants of zones of struggle, crafting objects and strategies, we are now inviting you to dive into the exchanges and join our common processes during a 2-days festival happening at Floating University Berlin.

For this gathering, we extended the invitation to other activists and transdisciplinary groups.  Working on revoicing a river and awakening watery creatures from Marseille, Les Gammares Collective with Made in the River project will join the constellation as well as researchers and academics of the TD-Lab of the Berlin University Alliance and BUA Exploration-Project “Rescaling Global Health” to build bridges between disciplines of applied and citizen science as well as artistic and activists approaches.

From these streams of waters, we will learn and shape a time and place for exchange and friendships, tactics and solidarities, a time for confluences.