What does it mean to believe in a river? What if democracy itself is a belief system, and how to reimagine it in ecological terms?

Across Europe, rivers have long been sites of life, myth, and governance.

Before dominant religions, much of Europe’s pagan cosmologies understood rivers as living beings, entities with spirit, agency, and voice. They shaped everyday relationships with land, water and each other.

Over time, nature was transformed into something to dominate, first through religious hierarchies that placed humans above it, and later through modern systems that framed land and water as resources to be owned, managed, and extracted. Today, another belief system structures our world: capitalism. Within it, rivers are rarely treated as subjects of rights but as assets in an economy. This raises a fundamental question: Who gets to decide the fate of a river?

The free Republic / Wiener Festwochen is partnering up with European Alternatives on 'Rivers of Democracy', a transnational initiative that seeks to reimagine rivers not only as ecological systems but as subjects of rights, intertwined with human communities, democratic participation, and cultural expression. As part of this collaboration, a group of selected participants will gather for a residency in Vienna, where they will collectively develop two workshops to be hosted on the Badeschiff.

Further Information
euroalter.com/projects/rivers-of-democracy/