River Talk I
13th May 2027
Sara Blanco-Ramírez is a geographer and hydrologist working at the intersection of political ecology, critical water geographies, and art-science collaborations. She engages with water as an empirical and conceptual lens, using participatory methods to understand how environmental knowledge is produced, contested, and negotiated Her work focuses on citizen science not only as a method, but as a political exercise to rethink relations between science, waterbodies and communities. Alongside her research, she collaborates with artists, organizes collective spaces such as film clubs and workshops, and have contributed to exhibitions and performances that bring together scientific and artistic practices. She is currently a lecturer at the Department of Geography at the University of Costa Rica.
At River Talk I, Sara presents her research and project. Water is defined, quantified, contested and valued in myriad ways. While hydrology often
approaches water as a quantifiable and physical entity, critical water geographies, political ecology, and anthropology highlight how water is deeply entangled with power and structural inequalities. Concepts such as the hydrosocial cycle, waterscapes, or hydrofeminism foreground water as material, social, and embodied. Building on the CrowdWater-citizen science initiative, “Embodied Waters: From Hydrological Data to Collective Knowledge” is a SNSF-Agora that aims to rethink how scientific, situated, and artistic practices can come into dialogue to rethink possibilities for new vocabularies and relationships with water. In collaboration with WE ARE AIA, the project brings together hydrology, art, and participatory practices to explore how hydrological observations can be connected to lived, embodied, and cultural experiences of water. The project shifts the focus from water as an object of study to water as a relational space. By situating people as active participants rather than observers, the project aims to strengthen connections, awareness, and collective responsibility toward waterbodies.
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River Talks are curated by Noor Ahmed, Martina Huber, and Anushka Rajendran for River Landscapes in collaboration with Karachi Biennale 2027, We Are AIA|Awareness in Art, and Prameya Art Foundation