flowing floated, Neuprüll to Danube, Regensburg
For donumenta ClimArt – Artists for a Resilient Future, artist Ulrika Eller-Rüter developed a site-specific concept for Regensburg. At its heart is the Vitusbach: a watercourse that is barely visible in the cityscape. The artist brings the course of the Vitusbach to life artistically all the way to its confluence with the Danube, drawing attention to its hidden sections where it flows only underground or disappears entirely from the cityscape. Its sound, its disappearance, and its transformation become a sensory experience within the urban space, thereby bringing it back into people’s consciousness.
For Regensburg, water samples from the Danube, Regen, Naab, and Vitusbach become part of the artistic research. The microscopic visual worlds that Ulrika Eller-Rüter has developed over the years will be presented at the Regensburg World Heritage Visitor Center from June 21 to July 15, offering a new and unfamiliar perspective on the city’s waterways.
Ulrika Eller-Rüter makes visible and audible what often remains hidden and invites us to perceive water anew as a living, sensitive component of our environment.
CV
Ulrika Eller-Rüter, Solingen
www.ulrika-eller-rueter.de | Instagram: ulrika_er
Artist Ulrika Eller-Rüter is working internationally across various media and has focused on water as the basis of life, as a repository of history, and as a field of artistic inquiry, for many years. Her work deliberately operates at the intersections of art, science, and social engagement. Through interdisciplinary and participatory formats, she explores the fragile, the hidden, and what lies “beneath the surface,” in both ecological and human contexts. Imaging techniques from the natural sciences become artistic tools, opening up new perspectives on our environment.
In her “Sea-Level-Labs,” she combines scientific methods with artistic practice, developing multifaceted works that span painting, installation, performance, and music.
Ulrika Eller-Rüter’s artistic work has taken her to numerous countries with exhibitions, performances, and interventions in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Central America, among other places. She has also served as a visiting professor at renowned art academies and universities, including in Kraków, Vilnius, Chengdu, Dalian, Stellenbosch, and Abu Dis.
Since 2019, the artist has been collecting water samples from rivers, seas, and springs worldwide during her travels. She archives and examines these samples under a microscope. This process gives rise to fascinating visual worlds that appear as visual codes of landscapes, civilization, and natural processes. Every body of water has its own “signature,” a distinctive character.
