River Becoming

2023 to 2024

Research Soundwalk Sound Performance

Six soundwalks along the Mur river in Graz — listening with and through the river, its sediments, its non-human voices, its murky presence in the city.

Within River Becoming, six soundwalks open to the public took place along the Mur in Graz in 2024, facilitated by artists who approached the river with their own ways of listening. Our intention was also to create space for a collective celebrating and sharing of memories and personal connections to Mur. In that process, Mura became a collaborator, a witness and a medium.

Reza Kellner's photographs follow the movement of Mura and other bodies that cross paths with it. Instead of trying to freeze the shaking and oscillation, the photography embodies this movement as part of the creative process and composition, bringing together temporality and the aspect of moving through space. The images evoke the feeling of passing by the river more than staring at it from a fixed position.

Some of Anna Jurkiewicz's Letters of Mixed Feelings (2023–) are sprouting, nourished by the river. Feelings understood as sensations, embodied signs, instincts and drives, entangled in interspecies and inter-object relationships with all their tensions, frictions, dependencies and collaborations.

The project gathered photographers, sound artists, writers, and performers, resulting in the art book and exhibition Murky Voices (2025).

Location
Mur river, Graz

Year
2023 to 2024

Artists
Anna Jurkiewicz, Reza Kellner, Antuum, Lain Iwakura, Eva Ursprung, Chloé Ryo

Photography — Reza Kellner

Poems — Anna Jurkiewicz

Anna Jurkiewicz — titles to follow

Practice

[Methodology text — describe the research approach: deep listening, sensory ethnography, hydrofeminist perspectives, the collaborative structure of the soundwalks, and how each artist engaged with the river in their own way. To be written.]

Video works