Fluid Interdisciplinarities Festival

08:30 – 09:00  Participants welcome with coffee and tea

09:00 – 09:10  Opening remarks by Jeltsje Kemerink-Seyoum, (IHE Delft, WDPP Coordinator of the Water and Development Partnership Programme)

09:10 – 10:30  Grounding interdisciplinarity (facilitated by Emanuele Fantini (IHE Delft) and Margreet Zwarteveen (IHE Delft)

In this first session we will recap the (online) journey that has led the different WDPP projects to this workshop. Building on the concepts of the “disciplined interdisciplinary” and “travelling concepts” we will ground a conversation about interdisciplinarity in our practices and lived experiences, acknowledging the contribution of each discipline and try to find common ground among them.

11:00 – 12:30  ‘Riding the waves of discomfort: reflecting on the dialogue with society in the field of water’.

After an initial presentation on interdisciplinarity as discomfort, in this session we will use the technique of forum theater to tell, share and reflect on stories of interdisciplinary encounters in which we have felt uncomfortable, enriched, or both.

Facilitated by Marcel Kuper (UMR G-EAU, Montpellier) and Bruno Bonte (UMR G-EAU, Montpellier)

12:30- 14:00    Lunch

“Living in an interdisciplinary world: research practices in water studies” is a book which main project is to document and learn from how interdisciplinarity is being done in practice, approaching it as a mode or style of doing water research. Or, more likely, as a range of modes and styles, each emerging through meandering processes of experimentation and improvisation.

The book shows that not defining interdisciplinarity is a good way to remain curious and continue learning about it, keeping the possibility open that interdisciplinarity is something else or something more than what one initially expected.

Book Editors:

Anne-Laure Collard is a sociologist at INRAE (French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment).

Jeanne Riaux is an anthropologist at IRD (French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development).

Marcel Kuper is a water scientist at Cirad (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development).

09:00 – 09:30 Recap of day 1 and introduction to day 2

09:30 – 10:30 Storytelling for interdisciplinarity

In this session, facilitated by Juliette Cortes Arevalo (TU Delft) and Emanuele Fantini (IHE Delft), the participants will have the opportunity to craft the story of the interdisciplinary journey that they would like to take and to share it with the colleagues of their WDPP project’s team.

11:00 – 12:00 Spaces for interdisciplinarity

Introduced by a presentation by Manon Mostert -van der Sar (Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences), this session will allow the participants to reflect on what type of spaces we need to promote and facilitate inter or trans-disciplinary encounters. We will try to combine our individual story with those of other project team’s members, into a collective journey.

12:00 – 12:30 Wrap up and the way forward

Facilitated by Margreet Zwarteveen and Emanuele Fantini (IHE Delft)

12:30- 14:00    Lunch

Before the event, at 15:00 it will be possible to visit RADIUS current exhibition THE DESIRE FOR A DONUT(ECONOMY)

During this event artist and field worker Maud van den Beuken explores today's definitions of the Maas 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 11-month residency at the Jan van Eyck in Maastricht.

Free entrance. Limited places available. Participants should register on RADIUS website.

Please note that the location is not wheelchair accessible.

Discussant: Margreet Zwarteveen (IHE Delft)

"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: artifacts 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 curated 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.

About the author: Julie Patarin-Jossec

A visual sociologist, Julie Patarin-Jossec’s practice spans ethnography, queer theory, and environmental studies. Over the past nine years, their research has emphasized the role of technologies, artifacts, and scientific knowledge in the reproduction of colonialist and heteronormative systems of oppression, and research-creation as a form of liberatory scholarship.

Free entrance. Limited places available. Participants should register on the RADIUS website. 

Please note that the location is not wheelchair accessible

09:00 – 10:30 First session: rules and procedures 'Representing rivers'

Gabriela Cuadrado Quesada, (Senior Lecturer in Water Rights and Justice, IHE Delft): Revisiting groundwater law through the lenses of earth system law and rights of nature.

Radhika Mulay (Research Initiative for the Performing Arts. Shri Silambam Academy of Fine Arts, SNS Arts Development Consultancy. Chennai, India). Rights of Rivers through the lens of Bharatnatyam.

Pauline Münch (AnthropoScenes Making Sustainable Water Futures Public IRI THESys | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Representation, Participation and Collaboration along the River Spree.

Carlota Houart (Wageningen University and Research), Listening to the Voices of the River: towards multispecies justice in river management and governance.

11:00 – 12:30 Second session: debate 'River, Cloud, Fish, Stone’
A role-play moderated by Maud van den Beuken

13:30- 15:00 Third session: deliberation Sediments, confluences and outflow.
A sharing session to harvest and deliberate towards future actions of the House of Rivers.
Moderated by Regina Hugli and Emanuele Fantini

Entrance: free. Limited places available. Participants should register on the RADIUS website 

Please note that the location is not wheelchair accessible.

16:00-16:30 Performance: 'Gagri Phooti' (broken pot) by Radhika Mulay

This dance performance is based on the lines written by poet Kabir ‘भला हुआ मोरी गगरी फूटी, मैं पनियां भरन से छूटी मोरे सिर से टली बला ’... translated as ‘my pot is shattered, a blessed plight, no longer must I fetch and fight for water, from my head is lifted, the burden of old’. These lines are relevant in today's times to depict the troubled relationship of women and water.

16:30-17:30 Workshop: Finding the Flow Within by Radhika Mulay

The workshop will be centered around the idea of introducing the participants to the basics of Bharatnatyam, the philosophy and evolution of dance forms, inspiration and influence of nature on the dance vocabulary and content (in this case Indian dance forms), and linking it with the idea of rights of rivers and 'Finding the Flow Within'.

The workshop is open to all and does not require particular dancing skills.

Entrance is free.