This project is initiated by (HyCP) Hyper Cultural Passengers in Veddel, Hamburg and deals with life on and with the water from different perspectives. Different global artistic positions are considered, described and explained in order to sketch hyper-complex connections in a picture of the world. The project embraces art as a research and transformational opportunity to lead to collective, critical action and project narratives into the future.

HyCP is housed next to the Elbe river and the seaports of the city. Stories about Hamburg, the river landscape and the port often take place in glorified historical myths, in facts of economy and a kind of folklore of entertainment. But how can one adequately negotiate the complex, almost unmanageable interplay of culturally and urbanity in the face of acute crises in geopolitics, climate change and socio-economic transformation?

For the project I designed a workshop in cooperation with Hinda Weiss for students of the HELMUT-SCHMIDT-GYMNASIUM from Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg. In ‘Time Travelers on Veddel’ groups of students chose a place on Veddel where they feel connected to and asked themselves why does this place attract. Then they had to image how it looked like 100 years ago, in the present days and over a 100 years. These answers inspired them to make 10 videos that became part of the Mean Sea Level Artwalk on Veddel.

On the spot I made the work: ‘On Peute’, a collage of photo’s that are shot during the pandemic in 2021 on the island of Peute, the industrial site of Veddel in Hamburg. The collage shows a day on Peute, a place where almost nobody lives but where each day people from all over the globe come to work in the factories, load their trucks or unload the ships. On Peute, existing of pictures

From 21.06.2023 till 08.07.2023 work of several artists is presented in a group exhibition together with all the works of the students.