Valerie Karpan: Hydraulic Border Intervals

Installed within the circular architecture of the Tieranatomisches Theater (TA T), the work enters into a dialogue with the building’s multifaceted history as a place of observation and experimentation, as well as with its proximity to the River Panke. It is based on field recordings and found materials produced as part of a collaborative research project on the island of Chortyzja (Ukraine) together with Maryna Marynichenko and Clemens Poole, and also incorporates recordings from the Evros Delta (Greece) by Lefteris Krysalis.

The installation unfolds as an auditory environment structured by interference (interruptions?) and shifting relationships between bodies, sound and space.

The public event on 4 July marked the first joint presentation of the installation in the form of

• listening sessions,

• a conversation with the artists, and

• discussions with participants.

These encounters expanded the project’s exploration of transmission as an ecological and social process that takes place under conditions of restricted mobility and unstable conditions of perception.

‘Hydraulic Border Intervals’ invites visitors to navigate through fragmentary signals and shifting sonic relationships, and explores how knowledge can continue to circulate when the channels through which it is conveyed remain unstable.

Valerie Karpan is a researcher and cultural practitioner. She works in both artistic and academic contexts. Her work is characterised by a commitment to inclusive education, participatory art and innovative curatorial practices. Her key areas of research include participatory art, colonial and decolonial discourses in the context of Eastern European studies, forms of memory and commemoration, and participatory mapping.

She is a co-founder of the NGO Cultural Geographies and its Children’s Geographies initiative. She has been a member of the art collective Variable Name since 2018. She was a fellow of the Gaude Polonia programme run by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2018), a participant in the Curatorial Platform at the PinchukArtCentre (2020), and an artist-in-residence at the WRO Art Centre in Wrocław, Poland (2019), and in the Ukrainian Calling programme in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany (2021). In 2022, she was an Art Prospect Fellow (Art Prospect, New York), where she conducted research into socially engaged practices alongside colleagues from the USA. She has been nominated for the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2025.

Artist

Valerie Karpan

Research and artistic collaboration

Field surveys and field research (Chortyzja Island, Ukraine)

Maryna Marynichenko

Clemens Poole

Field recordings (Evros Delta, Greece)

Lefteris Krysalis

Sound design

Jean-Daniel Tömör

Lefteris Krysalis

Conceptual discussions

Maryna Marynichenko

Clemens Poole

Lefteris Krysalis

Yurii Tymoshenko (Mokri Dereva)

Roman Kahal

Yehor Polishchuk

Material contributions

Mariia Piletska (seasonal photographic prints)

Yevheniia Maior (objects)

Sculptural contributions, animation

Oleksii Voitykh

A production by

inherit. heritage in transformation, Humboldt University of Berlin

Director

Prof. Dr Eva Ehninger

Prof. Dr Sharon Macdonald

Set design and production

Caspar Pichner

Production Assistant

Anne Huber

Co-ordination

Elisaveta Ernst

(Ukrainian, English, German)