“Breman in the Water“ (“Bremensch im Wasser”) is a month-long intervention into the Weser river that occurred in September 2024. Installed by the Tiefer 2 anleger on the Weser promenade, a wooden mannequin smeared in mud, bark, river algae and faded paint floats in the river. A pile of clothes lays at the end of the pier, as if the wooden man had stripped, and jumped into the river like a freediver. This is the Breman. As the river changes direction twice a day, the Breman turns to face the oncoming current, and appears to be swimming in place against the flow, like a Bremer Sisyphus. Around him floats a tangled nest of river debris coagulating around his body, like a verdant, primeval soup out of which the Breman is brought into being. These floating masses drift apart and recombine around him in a perpetual process of constructing and deconstructing. Together, with the humus he carries around him, the germ of a fledgling land mass emerges from the water.

After all, the city emerged from these waters as well, and the waters present many faces. The Weser’s current changes direction twice a day as the tidal waters from the North Sea push 80 km inland to Bremen. These changing currents give the river several moods – when it flows to the sea, the river is generally placid, smooth, inevitable – a draining; when it flows back in, it is turbulent, insistent, creeping – an inundation. These unique flows are the product of human intervention into the river’s course. Canalization of the Weser in the late 1800s was designed to bring the tide to the Port of Bremen, offering ships speedier access to the city at high tide and ensuring that the high tide would take away any sedimentation that might make the port too shallow for use. And so, perhaps, the reversed flow of the Weser carries with it all of Bremen’s industrial, colonial, and economic global aspirations, while the natural flow embodies the river that brought the city and the land into being. Perhaps, the city’s soul is to be found in the water, attuned to the rhythm of the tides, animated by the opposing currents.

Indeed, Bremen is a city of contradictions – of opposing currents – that we are all, nonetheless, caught up in. It is at once an industrial city with an environmental consciousness, a diverse city with little ethnic integration, a poor city with pockets of immense wealth, and a city with a proud past rearing towards an ambiguous future. The vitality of the city comes from the resilient, continuous work that is performed to bridge these contradictions. From the water, the Breman sees both the city’s future and past. The figure is pushed and buffeted by the river in a visceral, absurd negotiation with the river’s energies. He is a surrogate and a companion in which we can see reflections of ourselves and our city – each in its own scale trying to find stable footing among turbulent currents. What is he confronting? What are we? Every day, as the Breman faces a different face of the river, the answers may change. But only in asking these questions may we work towards an answer.

Installed from 03.09.2024 – 29.09.2024

Video documentation [here]

This project was made possible by the Karin und Uwe Hollweg Stiftung, the Bremen Senator für Kultur’s office, the Hansestadt Bremisches Hafenamt, the Wasser-und-Schiffsfahrtamt Bremen and Bremen Ports. Footage and images by Clemens Hornemann