“The action of the river” — performative lecture by Anna Barcz, Anna Nacher and Mo Tomaszewska

Together with Anna Nacher and researcher Anna Barcz, who has been working on the environmental history of rivers for years, and artist, hydrofeminist and performer Mo Tomaszewska, who single-handedly crossed the Vistula River in a kayak, we will reflect on the forms of action of rivers and their complex causes.

We do not perceive all of them as friendly: floods and violent uprisings and their consequences are among the phenomena described in terms of a direct threat to the human order. During a performative lecture, composed of many voices and forms, the presenters will invite participants to a conversation that will help reorient perspectives, scales and meanings.

Is water really an unpredictable element? How can we leave behind both — as Ewa Bińczyk defined it — the Anthropocene marasmus and the climate mourning, and concentrate on what we can do in interaction with water? Where can we sail with the current of rivers and where to look for allies? These are just some of the questions whose resonances will provide us with grounds for conversation.

Anna Nacher, PhD — Professor at the Institute of Audiovisual Arts of the Jagiellonian University, researcher of media art, environmental humanities, sound practices and digital culture. Author of books and numerous scientific articles, as well as curator and participant of projects. As an artist, she carries out solo projects in the field recordings and situated listening area, which she presented, among others, at the Biennale Momentum 13 (Moss, Norway, 2025) and Nine Days of Green (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2026). Scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (KPO grant for Culture, 2025). She has collaborated with American artist Victoria Vesna and the UCLA Art|Sci Center, where in 2021 she hosted as an online Artist-in-Residence as part of the project Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption. She is currently collaborating with Slovenian sound artist Ida Hiršenfelder as part of the After the Flood project focused on sound ecology of fossil fuel mining areas, with the support of Creative Industry Košice within the European Media Art Platform. Since 2015 he has been introducing the biotop Lechnica permaculture centre. In the years 2025-2026, as part of the Nowohucka Odyssey, she implemented a series of activities entitled “Library of Breaths”.

Prof. Anna Barcz — literary scholar and researcher of environmental humanities, professor at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. She deals with ecocriticism, environmental history, cultural narratives of rivers and floods, and the relationship between literature, history, and the non-human world. She led research projects dedicated to the Oder and Vistula, including the “Aquacritical Vistula”, combining environmental history, literature and deep mapping methods. He currently directs the “Monster Rivers” project, which deals with the history of catastrophic floods in modern Europe. She was a Fellow of the Trinity Long Room Hub in Dublin and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. Author of books on ecocriticism, environmental cultures and human relations with the non-human world, including Environmental Cultures in Soviet East Europe: Literature, History and Memory and Ecological Realism. From ecocriticism to zoocriticism in Polish literature.

Mo Tomaszewska — visual artist and performer. A graduate of the Faculty of Industrial Forms and the Faculty of Intermediates of the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. She studied Painting and Art History at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, England. Her main form of expression is performance art and artivist activities, touching on the topics of social inequality, human and animal rights, ecology.