By creating a common space for the exploration of water – and the flow of knowledges, wisdoms and practices around this life-sustaining element – the
Fluid Boundaries project integrates questions and methods from different disciplinary and cultural perspectives.
On Thursday 30 October 2025, MASI Lugano hosted Fluid Boundaries’ concluding event.
The week before, the Fluid Boundaries practitioners met for a series of workshops and conversations, to share their practices and findings, discuss new ideas and develop public outreach formats. This Third Space Residency took place at Casa Carlo Cattaneo, the IBSA Foundation headquarters in Lugano, Switzerland.
Through contributions from the practitioners in the artistic, scientific and indigenous knowledge fields, the Fluid Boundaries project examines the role of water in the current global ecological crisis, highlighting power relations and asymmetries reflected in the different ways of knowing and valuing water—across the world’s centres and peripheries, and within geographical, artistic, scientific and cultural contexts.
The project included three-month residencies in spring 2025 at science institutions, attended by three artists:
Kamil Hassim from Cape Town at the University of Johannesburg and the University of the Western Cape, Carla Maldonado from Rio de Janeiro at FIOCRUZ and Michael Azkoul
from Geneva at Eawag.
The reflections, experiences and outcomes of the whole Fluid Boundaries collaborative process were presented at the concluding event on 30 October, organised by the artists-in-labs program from Zurich University of the Arts, IBSA Foundation and MASI Lugano.
The event featured an engaging “Walkabout” format, with various stations designed as immersive islands of encounter and exploration. The practitioners involved in Fluid Boundaries shared the results of their work through musical performances, poetry readings, presentations, object installations, and video projections, creating a multidisciplinary and immersive experience.
The final event of the Fluid Boundaries project was hosted by the SciArt SwitzerlAnd initiatives, born from the collaboration between IBSA Foundation and MASI Lugano, aiming to promote scientific culture within cultural institutions and to foster an international research dialogue between the sciences and the arts.
Fluid Boundaries is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
Photographs: IBSA Foundation and artists-in-labs program
