Oscillating Currents

The University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, 2015

While a Visiting Professor at The University of Hamburg Institute of Cultural Anthropology, Carbonneau spent a month researching and documenting the role of Hamburg’s 800 year old Port within the architectural and cultural landscape of the city.   The architectural projection she created at the university consisted of original video documentation captured of the Elbe River, the tidal river that is the main channel to the port, projected onto tarp-covered scaffolding on the campus main building.  This work is meant to highlight the importance of the river to the historic and contemporary developments in the city of Hamburg, metaphorically linking scaffolding, as a structure that supports the construction, maintenance and repair of architecture to the Elbe River and it’s significance to Hamburg and the Schleswig-Holstein region.

Oscillating Currents is a term that describes the streams of water that flood and ebb to make tides rise and fall, and was used as the title of this work to reference the inextricable link between The Hamburg Port and the economic and cultural framework of the city.  As the port grows, so too does the city, and vice versa.

This work is supported by The University of Hamburg, The Institute of Cultural Anthropology at The University of Hamburg and Indiana University.