About the festival
Fluid Interdisciplinarities is a 3-day festival exploring the entangled relationships between water, people, research, and art.
Hosted by the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) with support from IHE Delft and the Centre for Cultural Techniques (HZK), the festival brings together researchers, artists, practitioners and the public to explore diverse perspectives on water-related challenges.
Set in the historically layered spaces of Humboldt-Universität's Tieranatomisches Theater, the program features collaborative academic sessions, walkshops, artistic installations, and embodied experiments in thinking and moving with water. Through interdisciplinary dialogues and participatory activities—including film screenings, exhibitions, and discussions—the festival fosters knowledge exchange between science, art, and society.
By dissolving traditional boundaries between disciplines and knowledge systems, Fluid Interdisciplinarities invites all participants to consider:
How do we engage with water — and how it, in turn, shapes us.
Why join?
Because rivers don’t care about disciplinary boundaries — and neither should we.
This festival invites researchers, artists, activists, and the public to spend three days thinking with water: through movement, dialogue, film, sound, writing, and walking. Whether you're involved in nature protection, environmental justice, social inquiry, creative practice, or transdisciplinary research, this is a space to share, question, and connect.
You’ll encounter formats that make space for exchange without forcing consensus — from World Cafés to walkshops, from collective notepads to sponge cake tastings.
Come to connect your work with others. Come to be unsettled. Come to let things settle.
Festival Highlights
A glimpse into the currents shaping our days together
🧍♀️💬 World Café
Intimate circles. Expanding ideas.
In fast flashes and deep dialogues, small groups gather to exchange across disciplines:
one question, one table, one ripple at a time.
🎭 Party of the Panke
The river takes the mic.
Artistic stations, legal fictions, multispecies politics:
all staged beside the Panke in a living dialogue with the water.
🚶♀️🌍 Watery Walks
Follow the flow beneath the city.
Urban streams, street pumps, sewage stories — walk with experts through Berlin’s entangled water histories and futures.
🎥 River Film Fest
Rivers on screen, rights in motion.
Shorts and features on water justice, storytelling, and the pulse of rivers worldwide.
Open to all.
🌀 Sediment Sessions
Slow the flow.
A space to pause, process, and let ideas settle:
with a sediment pad in hand and time to reflect between the currents
🧘 Moveshop: Be River, My Friend
No talking. Just flowing.
Explore water through your own body.
A movement workshop with no rules, just rhythm, breath, and curiosity.
🍰 Tea Time with River Soaks
Taste the waters.
Sponge cakes soaked in river-inspired flavours:
a playful, edible pause for dialogue and comparison
🖼️ Exhibition Encounters
Where art and research become visible.
Objects, images, and installations invite reflection on how we relate to water:
materially, politically, and emotionally.
🧪 Tidal Formats
Interactive sessions that ripple back.
Participatory methods, object-driven conversations, and creative exchanges:
formats where knowledge is not just shared, but made together.
Who's behind the stream?
Anchoring Institutions
IRI THESys
IHE Delft
Zentrum für Kulturtechnik
University of Montpellier
WHERE WE'LL BE
🩺🐎Tieranatomisches Theater
Anatomy once echoed here. Now, fluid dialogues unfold under its dome. Here, walls remember and ideas begin to flow.
💡🏛️
Gerlachbau
The airy annex of the TA T. Here sessions breathe, ideas settle, and conversations quietly take root
🌱🏙️
The Panke & Campus Paths
Outside, Berlin’s hidden river carries us. Along its banks, we walk, listen, and follow the currents.
How to Get There
Address: Campus Nord, Philippstraße 13/Haus 3, 10115 Berlin (Veterinary Anatomy Theater)
Public Transport
🚇 U6 – Oranienburger Tor (8 min walk)
🚍Bus 142 (Philippstrasse) / Bus 147 (Charité - Campus Mitte)
🚉 S-Bahn – Hauptbahnhof (Berlin Central Station) (15 min walk)
🚋 Tram M5, M8, M10 – Invalidenpark (11 min walk)
💡 We recommend using the BVG app or Google Maps for live directions.
