The afternoon was guided by artist Michaela Davidova, whose practice explores ecological thinking through process-based, alternative photographic techniques. For Michaela, photography is not primarily about representation, but about chemistry, transformation, and relationality, about what happens when bodies, plants, liquids, light, and time interact. Her approach resonated strongly with the lab’s interest in developing methods that allow the river to articulate itself beyond anthropocentric frameworks.

The day before, Michaela had joined the group in the floodplains, inviting participants to collect small samples of plants, soil, and other materials that caught their attention. Now, back in the workshop, these samples became collaborators. The question was not how to depict the Rhine, but how its materials might respond when placed in dialogue with light-sensitive surfaces, liquids, and chemical processes.

As the workshop unfolded, the space filled with quiet concentration, gentle interactions and shared curiosity. People moved between processes: exposing, fixing, overexposing, composing, waiting, and attuning themselves to timing and chance. Michaela also invited small groups into the darkroom to experiment with watergrams: by floating photographic paper in water, creating waves and vibrations, and triggering a flash, fleeting water movements were captured as still images. Groups rotated, teaching one another the techniques they had just learned, and an informal archive of water memories began to grow across the tables and drying racks.

The afternoon culminated in a collective exercise. Michaela prepared a long strip of filter paper for chromatography, stretching across the space like a timeline. Each participant poured a small amount of their soaking solution into a petri dish. Thin filters were inserted into the paper and dipped into the fluids, allowing the liquids to rise slowly upward. Over time, pigments, residues, and traces separated and spread, guided by gravity, resistance, and material difference. Together, we watched as a shared, fluid record emerged; each sample distinct, yet part of a collective composition. The resulting strip became a material testament to our time in the floodplains: not a map in the conventional sense, but a response. Through chemistry, movement, and chance, the Rhine’s materials had left their marks in their own language. In this way, material mapping did not seek to capture the river, but to enter into a process of mutual inscription, where knowing happens through doing, and where matter is allowed to speak back.