LIQUID - Media-Walk

In the organizer's words:

LIQUID 4LIFE Part 2: WATER - nominated for the Cologne Theater Prize and the Kurt Hackenberg Prize for Political Theater

WEHR51 is continuing its 4LIFE sustainability cycle with LIQUID. This year, the element of water is the focus of the performative multi-media research. WEHR51 is staging a media walk that combines exhibition elements, video/animations, Rhine water compositions, scientific findings as well as mythical and literary images and places them in socio-political and provocative contexts. Guided by a performer and a narrator's voice over headphones, the audience embarks on a journey from Ebertplatz to the Rhine, encountering the history of water, its memory and its involuntary recollections.

The performative walk traces the meaning of water on its winding paths from the deep sea to the big city, from the cold poles to the Rhine traffic artery, from the underground sewers to the ear canals. Listening to water, giving it a voice and fighting for its rights is a central theme of the performance. It has a major political dimension, as nature, territories, rivers, habitats, animals, seas and plants must be granted legal rights. Rights that are enforceable. These demands, which have since been enshrined in the constitutions of countries such as Colombia, Ecuador and many others, arose primarily in America on the initiative of the first inhabitants. This is because water is a vital resource that large corporations have recognized as a consumer product and which is becoming increasingly polluted and scarce due to industry, lifestyle and carelessness.

The source of life, threatened, powerful and violent, icy cold and airy, intangible and yet stunning, beautiful and terrible, grave and source of life at the same time. In the climate catastrophe, water reveals the full range of its power and vulnerability as sea levels and temperatures rise.

LIQUID is the second part of the 4Life cycle, a four-part, four-year series on nature and sustainability. Following the theme of earth and the spectacular death of an oak tree in the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in 2023, WEHR51 is dedicating this year to the element of water.

Artistic directors: Andrea Bleikamp, Jens Standke, Rosi Ulrich
Director: Andrea Bleikamp
Texts/dramaturgy: Rosi Ulrich
Video: Jens Standke
Composition/underwater recordings:
Production management: Anke Schmitz
With: Asta Nechajute, Anna Möbus
Costume: Paula Noller
Assistant director: Gina Bensch
Lighting design: Jan Wiesbrock
Technology: Jan Kutscher

LIQUID is a production of WEHR51
In co-production with Sea-Eye, Seebrücke, Unser Ebertplatz and the motoki_Kollektiv
In cooperation with DER KLEINE CONTAINER, the project space of the City of Cologne and the Freihandelszone Ensemblenetzwerk Köln

Supported by the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne, NRW Landesbüro Freie Darstellende Künste, Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.