The Diplomatic Suitcase

Name: The Diplomatic Suitcase
Start: 2025-09-19T19:30:00.000+02:00
End: 2025-09-19T21:30:00.000+02:00
Location: Mediamatic

Water flows through every aspect of our lives. It is a force that is at once essential and powerful, yet deeply endangered. In our world, water is often silent in the face of political and legal decisions that determine its fate.

This exhibition invites you into a new conversation, a growing movement that imagines a world where water is no longer voiceless. We ask you to consider: What would happen if water could speak for itself?

Join us for the opening night of the Diplomatic Suitcase: a first viewing to the exhibition, followed by a Q&A with the team!
Free entrance!

The Confluence of European Water Bodies is a collective of over 30 rivers, seas, lakes, lagoons, and glaciers across Europe coming together to explore the rights of nature and to rethink our relationship with the waters that sustain us. The Confluence was founded at the shores of the Mar Menor in Spain in 2023 by the Embassy of the North Sea, ILP Mar Menor and TBA21-Academy. The travelling exhibition of the Confluence: the Diplomatic Suitcase, is curated and designed by Jakob Kukula and Leon Lapa Pereira.

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Diplomatic Suitcase - credits Theresa Maria Forthaus -

At the centre of the exhibition is the Diplomatic Suitcase — a travelling, multimedia installation packed with artefacts contributed by participating waters: the bones of a 1970s seahorse from Spain’s Mar Menor, algae from the Venice Lagoon, a bikini from Poland’s River Sisters. Each object carries with it stories of contamination, resistance, mourning, and care — and together, they call for urgent ecological and social transformation.

This exhibition invites visitors into the emotional and political currents of this alliance. It offers both a warning and a hopeful vision — one in which European waters, long exploited, begin to reclaim their agency, shaping not only our landscapes but our laws, cultures, and futures.

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Diplomatic Suitcase - credits Theresa Maria Forthaus -

Participating Waters include:

Akerselva, Baltic Sea, Deep Sea, Dogger Bank, Drina, Genova waters, Irish Sea & Liffey, Klarälven, Laguna de la Janda, Loire, Maas, Mar Menor, Mediterranean, North Sea, Odra, Os_lo Fjord, Ouse, Pek, Piave, Reuss, Reva, Rhine, Rhône, Snæfellsjökul, Spree, Tara, Tagliamento, Tavignanu, Tejo, Ticino, Vättern, Venice lagoon, Viskan, Vistula, Wattenmeer and Zenne

Commissioned by Embassy of the North Sea, ILP Mar Menor, TBA21–Academy/Ocean SpaceCurated and designed by Leon Lapa Pereira (Embassy of the North Sea) & Jakob Kukula (Spree Berlin)Co-produced by the Confluence of European Water BodiesGraphic design: Eva van BemmelenWith support from Creative Industries Fund NLSpecial thanks to the water bodies of Europe