For the project Guiding Spirits, the Berlin-based studio Symbiotic Lab travelled along the Elbe River for four days. From Dresden to Hamburg, they collected stories about the people and animals along the river. These stories were incorporated into a folding screen that embodies the non-human protagonists as a fictional hybrid creature. Additionally, they created an audio piece featuring fables from the Elbe and accounts from a beaver researcher, an Elbe salmon breeder, an Elbe fisherman, and a birdwatcher who they interviewed on their journey. The third element of the installation is a flag designed specifically for the Elbe expedition by Berlin-based textile artist Bettina Mileta. Inspired by the legend of the Elbe women, this flag accompanied the Lab on their way down the river.

The project was on display from September 3 to September 29, 2024, as a satellite of the exhibition Water Pressure – Designing the Future at the Freiraum at MK&G Hamburg, and from October 7 to October 14, 2024, in the exhibition Water School. A Speculation in Four Seasons by Studio Makkink & Bey and the Museum of Decorative Arts Dresden at Hubertusburg Castle.

Introduction to the Project:

Behind Pillnitz Castle, at the steps leading down to the Elbe, a gentle melody arises. Slowly, its sound drifts, merges into the glimmering waves of the calm river, and echoes back from the dense woodlands on the Elbe Island as a bird's call. A small crowd has gathered on the stone steps, listening to the singing of Jasmine Alakari. The Finnish River activist plays her kantele – an ancient instrument from Finnish mythology. They say the kantele has the power to gather spirits, humans, and animals. Today, she has come to summon the Elbe and its benevolent spirits. Wise witches, wicked nymphs, many-headed chimaeras, powerful sea monsters, and loyal human-animal hybrids: in the stories told about the Elbe, a host of fantastical beings gather. Each is a distorted reflection of humanity's relationship with the environment, whose depths and powers occasionally transcend into the supernatural. The monstrous itself expresses in these tales an idea of land and water as opposites. In this view, humans are beings of the land – even though we spend the first nine months of our lives as beings of water. In these tales however, water often takes on the form of the female representing the unconscious, the subdued, the excluded, the desired, and simultaneously the frightening other. In this way, they mirror the time and society from which they come, reflecting fears and hopes, norms and morals of their authors. Yet they are not fixed in form; by being retold, they continuously change, taking on new meanings. For us – artist Jakob Kukula and curator Leoni Fischer – the stories of the Elbe have guided our river expedition.

The term expedition evokes many associations, especially the era of great imperial European voyages, which are inextricably linked to the exploitation of these places – their people, beings and resources. We have chosen to imbue the term with our own meaning: as fictional vehicles, the river stories lead us to real places where habitats are preserved, biodiversity is protected, and regenerative strategies are locally tested. We seek to retell the stories of the people and animals we encounter there. The images on this page offer a glimpse into the stages of our journey.