River flows

River flows
Catalina Gomez Alvarez
What effects of human activities can be recognized in the river ecosystem?

Catalina Gómez Alvarez
Berlin/ Eindhoven
About
As a Designer I developed a critical and speculative position focusing on sociopolitical issues through a narrative and scenographic design language.
Links
Field of work
Design, Ecology, Multimedia, Film, Research
Project category
Raising awareness
Project submitted
2024

In my personally chosen projects, I work in interdisciplinary projects and teams. What I find impressive about working in teams, is the potential of the viral exchange of ideas and the paste of the common workflow. My intention as a designer is to spread awareness and make the user think consciously while putting my products into action. My projects usually begin with investigative research. The topics that I am most interested in are colonial history and extractivism as a postcolonial continuation.


Rivers are a sensitive ecosystem between human and nature that transcends national boundaries. analysed the river Dommel in Eindhoven with water samples. I was fascinated by the fact that a fault in one village or town can spread to a global problem through the flow of water. In an installation I shed light on this problem. Cotton threads slowly soak up colours that appear on a piece of paper, the flow of pollution is traced into the groundwater. In a next step I am interested to look deeper into plants that are absorbing toxicity. My idea is to visualise this cleaning process in ceramic objects. During capsule firing, different materials can be burnt and leave a chemical trace on the ceramic.