Leaky Times: The poetics and politics of Water
The colloquium series Research Ecologies is aimed at doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers in the arts and sciences.
 

in May with:

Clara Lesser de Mello Silva: Investigating Cascading Drought Risks as Socionatural Processes (EN)

Cleo Wächter: Clepsydra - On Water as Time (EN)

Georg Scherlin: Make the Petrified Conditions Dance. A Speculation on Aggregate States of Society. (EN)

Moderation: Marie Aline Klinger

​​​​​​​

Clara Lesser de Mello Silva is a Brazilian PhD candidate at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. A transdisciplinary researcher and activist, she supports peasant and family farmers, as well as traditional communities in Latin America, in their struggles for land, food and water sovereignty. She incorporates decolonial thinking and feeling into her work, viewing territories as multi-layered and imbued with multiple meanings and considering the body to be inseparable from one’s physical, social, and political environments.

Her research focuses on making methodological contributions to drought risk modelling and on addressing how power relations and historical processes of vulnerability are created within different waterscapes, which results in diverse experiences of drought and an uneven distribution of socio-ecological impacts. Through her research, she aims to demonstrate the embodied experiences of drought and the various forms of situated knowledge from the studied territories, providing a platform for the narratives emerging from these areas. In the context of the Research Ecologies colloquium, she is exploring ways to work through art towards more context-sensitive research, questioning scientific methodologies, concepts, and knowledge validation.

Cleo Wächter's many interests can be distilled down to the question: How do we inscribe and read meaning into landscapes? Focusing on the broad spectrum of urban and ecological environments, she explores these issues through her visual art, writing and curatorial practice. At the moment, she is focusing on the connection between Water & Time, the way Text in Public Space shapes the latter. 

Previously, she was a research assistant for the Urban Culture Department of Art, Culture and History at the Mitte District Office as well as part of the artistic management team of the municipal gallery Bärenzwinger.  Her artistic work has been presented and published at a.o. Stroom Den Haag, the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, and the Floating University in Berlin. She holds a BA in Documentary Photography from the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague and an MA in Visual and Media Anthropology from the Freie Universität  Berlin. www.cleowaechter.com

Georg Scherlin creates spatial installations and architectural works that invite participation. In doing so, he performatively incorporates himself in the role of the artist and critically examines the historical, economic, and social conditions of sculpture in a self-reflective manner. In this way, he transforms places into spaces for encounter and explores forms of complicity. He speculates on processes of liquefaction and solidification, both in his sculptural work with aluminum and ceramics, and through scholarly research in and with archives. In doing so, he focuses in particular on the relationship between humans and nature—a relationship that, even in times of severe environmental destruction, remains shaped by romantic projections of the landscape.

Georg Scherlin studied Multimedia Art at the University of Applied Sciences Salzburg and Art in Context at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). He has exhibited at venues including the DAAD Gallery and staged performances at locations such as the Gropius Bau and the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin.  http://ggeeoorrgg.net 

When/ Where?
05.05.2026
5-7PM

Medienhaus UdK Berlin
Galerie
Grunewaldstraße 2
10823 Berlin

!! It’s going to be a very hands-on experience for everyone !!

The event is open to the public and admission is free.
The facility is wheelchair accessible. Part of the event will take place in the backyard, which is accessible via four steps. If you need assistance getting there, please feel free to contact us in advance:
Contact: bas3@intra.udk-berlin.de