A river is constantly in motion. The water flows relentlessly, forging its path and passing many different places on its journey to the sea. For Dadi Wirz, this constant movement becomes an allegory for his own life. Born in Papua New Guinea in 1931, he had already traveled to countless destinations in the South Seas during his early childhood and adolescence while on research trips with his father, the ethnologist Pedro Wirz, before returning to Papua New Guinea several times as an adult. As an artist, he first lived in Morocco, then in Portugal and England, before finally settling in Reinach in the Basel area. In his work, Dadi Wirz explores the many journeys he has undertaken and the numerous places he has seen and lived in. The work Rivers shown here is a self-portrait of sorts, bringing together all the rivers the artist has visited during his long, travel-filled life. The work can therefore be interpreted as a personal geographical archive. Mighty rivers like the Nile as well as regionally significant rivers such as the Birs unite in the work to form a stream of memories. Dadi Wirz selects distinctive sections of rivers that stand out due to their interesting courses. He draws these sections as personal notes, recording the places he has been or adding coordinates. The shapes of the river courses are milled from metal plates and collected in Plexiglas boxes together with the drawings. The result is an archive with the character of a diary, a personal chronicle of memories along these rivers.

The setting for Regina de Miguel’s video work Nekya, a Film River (2023) is the Rio Tinto mines northeast of Seville – one of the oldest operational mining sites in the world. Their red wastewater flows into the Guadalquivir and on into the Atlantic Ocean. Due to their unique geological composition, the mines resemble the surface of Mars. Through chains and layers of information, De Miguel traces the historically significant role of this mine in the colonization process, which was once controlled by the British-Australian conglomerate Rio Tinto Group. Like a collage, the video work takes us on a journey through present and past investigations of this historically, ecologically, and socially significant site. It traces how this land became the location of Spain’s first ecological strike in the nineteenth century, which ended bloodily when military guards fired on their own population to protect the interests of British capitalists – a model that was later exported to the territories of Indigenous populations from Canada to Australia. Today, the EU is supporting a new project by the Rio Tinto Group to mine lithium in Serbia for its planned «green transition.» Local activist groups are protesting this proposal due to the threat of groundwater pollution and the health risks for the local population. At a point of extreme ecological fragility, Rio Tinto is about our intertwined paths – both chemical and biological – and how the exploitation of land and people is connected to the ruthless policies of the powerful elite.

It takes some time to immerse yourself in Sophia Al-Maria’s Beast Type Song. Instead of telling a story with a beginning and an end, her film resembles a performance with a multitude of impressions, feelings, and uncertainties that lead the viewer further and further into the action with sound, poetry, and language. Young people navigate urban landscapes that straddle science fiction and real life. Is this a post-apocalyptic scene that has emerged in the wake of ecological destruction? Sophia Al-Maria asks the question «What will become of us?» in a world that is destroying its natural and social foundations and in which environmental and social crises are inextricably linked. In Sophia Al-Maria’s work, the body becomes a political site: it is fragile and bears the marks of domination, oppression, and exploitation. At the same time, the artist views identity as a fusion of human, machine, animal, and myth – an open concept that rejects rigid categorizations of gender, origin, or class. However, instead of drifting into a pessimistic view of the future, the artist maintains a belief in the ability to change and, therefore, in a future that can be altered.