Across three distinct routes—from a drifting boat residency through the canals of France to a cycling expedition connecting Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest—participants engage in a rich tapestry of experiences. These include water quality testing, participatory artistic interventions, storytelling, and hands-on workshops on the rights of nature. 

Strategically woven into Europe’s cultural calendar, Rivers of Democracy connects with major festivals such as Fluctuations, Sziget, and Wiener Festwochen. More than a journey, the project is an invitation: to see rivers not just as natural resources, but as collective lifelines, spaces where culture, ecology, and democracy converge.
By traveling together, creating together, and learning from the rhythms of water, Rivers of Democracy seeks to inspire new forms of belonging, responsibility, and shared futures.

What are the routes and dates? 

The project consists of three distinct journeys across Europe. Each route explores a different dimension of rivers, as spiritual, artistic, and political spaces, while sharing a common thread: to experience democracy as something lived, practiced, and reimagined.

REGISTER HERE (deadline for applications 17th of May)

Rivers of Democracy x Wiener Festwochen (Vienna, Austria)

Dates: 18–21 June (Stationary Residency)
Location: Vienna, along the Danube

This year, the Wiener Festwochen turns its gaze toward religion, not only as an institutional force, but as a system of meaning-making that shapes how we relate to each other, to power, to collective life and to the natural world. Within this frame, Rivers of Democracy opens a space to ask:

What does it mean to believe in a river? What forms of cosmology once flowed through Europe’s waters—and what political worlds did they sustain? What if democracy itself is a belief system, and what if we need to reimagine it in ecological terms?

Across Europe, rivers have long been sites of life, myth, and governance.

Before dominant religious and political systems took hold, much of Europe’s pagan cosmologies understood rivers as living beings, entities with spirit, agency, and voice. These were not just symbolic beliefs; they structured how communities related to land, water, and each other. To harm a river was to break a relationship.

Over time, these ways of knowing were displaced. Nature was transformed into something to dominate, first through religious hierarchies that placed humans above it, and later through modern systems that framed land and water as resources to be owned, managed, and extracted.

Today, we live within another powerful belief system: capitalism, with its own rituals (consumption), values (growth), and invisible moral order. Within it, rivers are rarely seen as subjects of rights or participants in decision-making, but as assets within an economy.

This raises a fundamental question: Who gets to decide the fate of a river?

This residency invites participants to critically, artistically, poetically, theatrically, collectively explore how we understand rivers.

🚤 The Residency Experience

We are looking for 4–5 participants to join a 4-day immersive residency in Vienna, hosted on the Badeschiff as part of the Wiener Festwochen.

Together, you will:

• Design and facilitate two participatory public events within the festival on the boat
• Experiment with formats that blend assembly, ritual, performance, and dialogue
• Engage audiences in questions of ecology, cosmologies, and democratic transformation

The residency will culminate with a collective final swim in the Danube, to reclaim the river.

🔍 Who We’re Looking For

We are inviting people who are interested in rethinking democracy at its edges:

• Artists and performers
• Activists and organizers
• Researchers and thinkers
• Facilitators and community builders
• People working with mythology, storytelling and alternative ways of relating to nature

You don’t need to fit neatly into one category. What matters is your willingness to:

• Question dominant systems
• Engage with others across disciplines
• Contribute to a shared process of exploration and creation

Rivers of Democracy x Fluctuations Festival / Urban Boat (Northern France)

Dates: 3–10 July (TBC)
Route: Compiègne → Noyon → Péronne → Douai → Lille

This journey unfolds in collaboration with the Fluctuations Festival, a travelling festival along Europe’s rivers. At its heart is the Urban Boat: a traveling, floating platform that hosts artists, researchers, and cultural practitioners. More than a vessel, it is a moving space for creation, drifting through waterways while generating encounters, performances, and conversations along the way.

Within Rivers of Democracy, this boat becomes a temporary home, studio, and stage, a place to live, think, and create with the river. And if rivers were archives, what do they hold?

Beneath their surfaces lie histories of trade, extraction, migration, industry, and resistance, but also quieter, often invisible layers: forgotten ecologies, erased relationships, submerged imaginaries.

This residency invites participants to explore:

• What is hidden in Europe’s rivers?
• What stories have been silenced, diverted, or buried?
• What moves with the river, and what has been left behind?

At the same time, the journey foregrounds movement:

• What does it mean to move with water, rather than across it?
• How does slowness reshape perception, attention, and relation?
• Can drifting become a democratic practice—one that resists control, linearity, and extraction?

🚤 The Residency Experience

Participants will embark on a 6-day boat residency, traveling slowly through northern France’s canal systems, from Compiègne to Lille.

Living together on the water, the group will move through changing landscapes, towns, and communities, engaging with the river as a co-creator.

Participants are invited to develop micro-actions, gestures, dialogues and interventions that respond to the river and its contexts. These can be:

• Participatory (involving local communities in democratic dialogue along the route where possible)
• Performative (rituals, processions, embodied practices)
• Visual or spatial (installations, ephemeral works)
• Narrative (storytelling, sound, oral histories)

Rather than producing finished works, the focus is on process, responsiveness, and encounter.

⚓ Key Moments Along the Route

• Compiègne (Departure): A collective “funeral” performance, a moment to mourn what has been lost in our relationship with rivers, including rivers themselves.
• Along the journey: A series of micro-events and interventions in different stops (Noyon, Péronne, Douai), engaging local contexts and communities.
• Lille (Arrival): An open-format showcase as part of the Fluctuations Festival, sharing processes, fragments, and reflections developed along the journey.

🔍 Who We’re Looking For

We are looking for a small, diverse crew to join this floating residency, bringing together artistic, facilitation, and practical capacities.

This includes:

• Artists and cultural practitioners (performance, visual arts, sound, writing, hybrid forms)
• Facilitators and community practitioners (able to hold space, guide collective processes, and engage participants and publics)
• Project managers / coordinators (to support the flow of the journey, logistics, and on-the-ground organisation)
• Photographers / videographers / storytellers (to document and translate the experience into compelling narratives)
• Practically-minded people (hands-on, adaptable, comfortable with shared living, and able to support the day-to-day life on the boat)

Rivers of Democracy x Sziget Festival (Autria, Slovakia and Hungary)

Dates: 5–11 August
Route: Bratislava → Győr → Esztergom → Budapest

Sziget Festival is one of Europe’s largest cultural gatherings, a temporary city of music, art, and ideas, built on an island in the Danube. Each year, thousands come to celebrate.

The Danube is not just a river—it is a political body.

It flows across ten countries, connecting histories, economies, and ecosystems that do not always align. What happens upstream shapes what is possible downstream. Decisions made in one place ripple across borders.

Few places make this more visible than the Gabčíkovo Dam.

Originally conceived as a joint project between Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the socialist era, the dam was meant to produce energy, regulate flooding, and modernize the river. But as construction progressed, opposition grew—especially in Hungary, where concerns about ecological damage, water diversion, and the destruction of wetlands sparked one of the region’s first major environmental movements.

In 1989, Hungary suspended and eventually abandoned its part of the project. In response, Czechoslovakia (and later Slovakia) unilaterally diverted the Danube and completed the dam on its own territory.

What followed was not just an environmental dispute—but a democratic and legal conflict between nations. The case went to the International Court of Justice, which ruled in 1997 that both sides had failed to uphold their agreements, leaving a complex legacy of shared responsibility, unresolved tensions, and partial cooperation.

Today, the river still flows—but altered.
Ecosystems have shifted.
Water no longer follows its historical course.

🚴 The Residency Experience

This is not a typical residency. For four to five days, you will cycle along the Danube from Bratislava to Budapest, crossing borders, following the river, and experiencing its changing landscapes and realities up close.

Each day unfolds as a combination of:

• Physical movement (cycling along the river, approximately 3 hours per day)
• Collective inquiry (water testing, conversations, local encounters)
• Shared decision-making (adapting the route, rhythm, and focus as a group)

You will travel light, stay in different locations along the way, and navigate the practicalities of the journey together.

As a group, you will:

• Gather stories, tensions, and perspectives from the river
• Explore questions around ecology, borders, and democracy
• Reflect on what you are experiencing in real time
• Begin shaping how this journey will be shared with others

The residency culminates at the Sziget Festival, with free tickets included.

There, you will step into a different role:
not just participants, but hosts, facilitators, and storytellers.

Together, you will design and deliver a public-facing moment—a participatory format (assembly, workshop, collective conversation, or hybrid format—that brings the journey into the festival space.

🔍 Who We’re Looking For

We are looking for people ready to take on an active, co-leading role in this journey.

You might be:

• An activist or organiser
• A researcher or student
• An artist or storyteller
• A facilitator or community practitioner
• Or someone with a strong curiosity and willingness to engage

No single profile is required—but some things matter:

• You are comfortable cycling long distances over multiple days
• You are open to shared responsibility and group decision-making
• You are willing to step into visibility and leadership at the end of the journey
• You are curious about how democracy can be practiced across borders and ecosystems

✨ What we offer

Participants in Rivers of Democracy join a unique transnational journey at the intersection of art, ecology, and democratic experimentation.

We provide:

• Travel to and from the starting/ending points of each route
• Accommodation throughout the residency or journey
• Food and basic living costs during the programme
• A platform to co-create and present work within major European festivals such as Sziget Festival, Fluctuations Festival, and Wiener Festwochen
• A unique environment for interdisciplinary exchange and experimentation
• The opportunity to be part of an international network of practitioners working at the intersection of art, ecology, and democracy

🌱 What Is Expected from Participants

We are looking for people who are willing to actively contribute to both the journey and the group.

Participants are expected to:

• Take part in a preparatory online meeting(s) before the route
  • Get to know the group
  • Co-design ideas, contributions, or formats for the journey and final outputs
• Contribute to the collective experience during the route, which may include:
  • Co-creating artistic, participatory, or research-based activities
  • Supporting facilitation, documentation, or logistics (depending on your role)
  • Engaging with local contexts and participants along the way
• Be open to shared responsibility:
  • Living and working closely with others
  • Adapting to changing conditions
  • Participating in group decision-making
• Take part in the final public moment of the route:
  • A presentation, workshop, performance, or other format within a festival context

🧭 Selection Process

• 4 to 5 participants will be selected per route
• Selection will be confirmed by mid-May
• All core costs are covered, including travel (within Europe), accommodation, food

Selection criteria:

• Ideally one local participant per route
• Ensuring a common working language among selected participants
• Striving for a balanced mix of profiles on each route
• Flights will only be covered within Europe
• No age preference

We are not just selecting profiles, we are composing small, complementary groups that can work, live, and create together.

We are committed to building diverse and inclusive groups, and we strongly encourage applications from people of different backgrounds, experiences, and identities who are often underrepresented in artistic, ecological, and civic spaces.

REGISTER HERE

Do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions: i.alonso@euroalter.com