Interview with Katherine Ball by Laura Frias & Hande Öğün 24

How did you get involved in the Floating University program? What do you expect to learn from it and from its participants? I got involved with Floating University because I knew Benni from a previous project The Garden of Biological Sabotage in Graz. And when I got a scholarship last year for an art project in Germany, I wrote to Benni. He knew I was working with water so he invited me to participate in this project as an artist in residence.

One of the things I hope to learn more about is not just the technology behind water fltration or water systems, but also how to create a relationship or connection with water. This touches upon the rules of habit that could solve a lot of problems, if we’d just change our habits. I believe if people feel connected with water, we would change our habits with how we use and impact water. We would act and design differently if we had a more intimate relationship with water. What I am trying to do right now is to get to know people and create a friendly atmosphere in which people feel open to getting back in touch with our relationships with water. I hope Floating University can be a space where we relate with the ecosystem and eachother.

What I also hope to learn is all the things I don’t expect to learn. I started this process to learn how to use design to make ecological systems more appealing, engaging and inspiring. In that sense I’d like this place to become more engaging, not necessarily beautiful, but weird and inspiring. I am really looking forward to the students as teachers and I am excited about the ideas they are going to bring up. I think it is important that students raise questions and bring up new ideas to let us stop and think. When you are young you have a certain power and questioning is a way of giving strength to that power.

Water can be cleaned by using flters like fungi, sand or bacteria.

Most of your projects include this idea on a small scale (a kitchen sink) and on a medium scale (a house). Do you think it will be possible to apply this system in the near future on a larger scale (like in cities)? There are already a lot of wastewater plants with this technology using natural flters. Here in The Hague there is a place where a giant sandflter is installed and I am very much interested in the scientifc aspects of this flter. But actually I am more interested in getting people engaged with water within their homes, so on a smaller scale and not being part of a larger centralized system. My utopia is that there are parallel centralized and decentralized systems so there is a bit redundancy in case something happens. I would very much like to dive into a project not on a civil scale but on a community or neighbourhood scale, or a whole building. In that case it is more about bringing people together in this process of making ecological infrastructures and joining forces in the community.

Do you believe that the Floating University is a good platform to share your experience to reduce waterwaste? Could it be a starting point to spread your knowledge? Yes, I think so. I am much looking forward to the Floating University being a place to debate the water use, the water supply, where does it come from and where does the waste go. I am also excited about the space for public forums where people can come together and talk about urgent issues we face in urban space today. I hope that these forums can bring people together to talk about how issues like water use could be developed in a really authentic way without preconceived plans. Unlike the urban planning processes with these massive participatory events where neighbours talk about a future development but in reality architects, planners and developers have already their own ideas and don’t really listen.

When the Floating University program comes to an end, how do you hope the site will be developed?

Do you have any utopian vision that could be applied here? I have a fantasy that the pond could become a place where you can swim in the middle of the city where species like frogs, birds, ducks can live too. My utopian vision is that the main road, the Columbiadamm, will be closed for traffc and the Tempelhof airport will become a giant garden.