When the Pader rains, take a bath in the clouds

What role does the river play in one’s own identity? What do the element of water and nature with all its animals and plants have to do with one’s own ecological self-image?

Artist Daniela Brasil has set up a space of encounter in the Kunstmuseum im Marstall in a co-creative process with students from the Friedrich-Spee-Gesamtschule to explore these questions. The large willow nest invites you to take your time and listen to a sound composition made from field recordings of the river and water stories told by the students. It offers a space for reflection on more-than-human kinship. The willows were partly harvested from the Pader and woven in the old tradition. After the exhibition, the willows will be returned to the Pader landscape. The encounter space will grow in objects during the exhibition, both through the cooperation with the students and through the participation of the visitors. For this, Daniela Brasil has developed, among other things, the guidebook Exercises in River Friendship for a walk along the Pader. From the Pader’s sources in the city centre to its mouth in the district of Schloß Neuhaus, it proposes a new approach to consciously experiencing the river landscape, which involves reflecting on the encounters that are experienced.

In her installations, actions and performances, Brasil often deals with her own relationship with nature and the interaction between humans and the non-human. In the exhibition I am the river, her focus is on the Pader and the relationship between humans and water.