"Mélusine" Videodocumentation of Performance. Sabrina Rosina. Photo (c) Lea Fabienne. 2025

Mélusine

Mélusine is a rite of passage — 17km downstream the encased river Wien, from city border to Donaukanal. This is a walk, a swim, a weaving. A speculative ecology written in wet fibre and flow. Through this embodiment, the artist calls forth Mélusine, the ancient, scaled demoness who slips between histories, resisting domestication. In the concrete heat of the riverbed, where flood control meets ecological neglect, she materialises the entangled crises of eco-politics, female rage, and survival. She wades, floats, knots. A raft of algae grows on her skin. She harvests what is unwanted: string algae, overlooked like the climbing plants that could cool these walls but are denied growth. This live gathering becomes costume, becomes body. Mélusine manifests a feminist ecology through ritual: mythology, wet labour, and the shimmer of refusal. Colour here stains and transforms—green clings, spreads, seeps. It signals kinship. It asks: who is allowed to grow?

Fact Box

Mélusine