Tuesday 12th August 2025
2.30pm-4pm
Join artist-researcher Lili Carr and urban researcher Madita Kümmeringer for a gentle afternoon picnic and swim in the Alte Donau, exploring the landscape changes above and below the water over the past 200 years. We will share archival documents and stories of bathing in the Old Danube, and search for the remnant traces of these histories in the topographies and ecologies surrounding us. All are welcome!
Once the main arm of the Danube, the Alte Donau is now a recreational lake for boating, swimming and fishing whose ecological balance is meticulously maintained by a cascade of daily technical measures implemented by the city of Vienna. Where there was once a flowing river, now an inflow pipe brings fresh water from the Neue Donau and an outflow empties it into the Mühlwasser. Where the river once sustained a flow of nutrients, now a regime of 'mowing' prevents nutrient overloading. Once a river, now an urban pond, the Alte Donau sustains an intensively urban yet increasingly fragile biotope.
With Madita Kümmeringer & Lili Carr.