Daniela Medina Poch & Elizabeth Gallón Droste
Intersecting Mediterranean(s) from the Perspective of its Regional Rivers, 2021-23
Intersecting Mediterranean(s) from its Regional Rivers is a research piece that aims to recognise the systematically hidden histories along the Mediterranean and to explore the latter as a complex region. Medina Poch and Droste approach the Mediterranean Sea in the plural as a salty water body mass that connects a network of sweet water bodies of rivers. They flow into each other as an interconnected body with multiple agents – human and more than human – cooperating and configuring its waterscape. Through the displacement of the eurocentric gaze of the Mediterranean, the artists aim to contribute to a broader re-assemblage of the identities and imaginaries around its cultures in its plurality.
The fabric which bonds the river and the ocean, becomes a living archive of this encounter and acts as a receptive membrane that carries memories, myths, relationships, and affects that nourish the Mediterranean. The textile gives visibility to the current, determining the course and pace, and is activated by the intersecting voices from the Po, Isonzo/Soča, Neretva, Cem Cijevna, Düden, Kishon, Nile, Medjerda, Chelif, Moulouya, Ebro and the Rhône rivers, amongst others. Intersecting Mediterranean(s) from its Regional Rivers aims to acknowledge the specificities of contexts and life flows that nourish the Mediterranean.
Courtesy of the artists.
Biography
Daniela Medina Poch (1992 – Bogotá) is an artist, educator and researcher. She investigates how unofficial histories and interspecies entanglements contribute to the conception of ecocentric narratives and epistemic bridges that amplify non-hegemonic knowledge systems. Her work has been part of The XXII Bienal de Cerveira, Portugal; The I Listening Biennial, Berlin; The VII Bienal of Performance, Bogotá; The Museum of Modern Art, Bogotá; SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin; documenta 15, Kassel and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Digital Academy; FLORA ars+natura, amongst other. It has been included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art Bogotá and the digital collections of Museo de la Memoria Bogotá and Collecteurs, the Museum of Private Collections.
Elizabeth Gallón Droste (1991 – Bogotá) conducts multimodal, artistic research. She navigates ecologies and interspecific patches, establishing dialogues between the multiple realities that constantly re-create landscapes through evocations, affective ecologies, and relationalities, focusing on rivers as articulators of extensive live networks. Combining different media, Elizabeth aims to establish dialogues and learn from site-specific processes. She is part of several networks and projects oscillating between art and science. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the Temporalities of Future graduate program at Freie Universität Berlin.
