The Rumpus International Rivers Interviews

The International Rivers Interview Series was born of two unrelated events. The first was a Roni Horn exhibit I saw some years back in New York featuring the work Still Water (The River Thames, For Example). Horn framed multiple close-up shots of the Thames passing through central London and approached the river with a number of questions. I remember Horn asking, ‘What is the color of water?’ and the elegant simplicity of that question struck me. One answer is that it has no color, that water is a body that either reflects its surroundings by throwing back a visual reply or absorbing organic matter. Water is, Horn later said, “a master chameleon. Or the ultimate mime.” Could rivers like the Thames, I wondered, reflect more than mud, trees and bridges, but history and culture too?

They’ll be interviewing four writers: Sasa Stanisic, György Dragomán, Dumitru Tsepeneag, and our own Dubravka Ugresic. The first interview, with György Dragomán, is up now.

An idea that’s definitely worth keeping up with.