The Sponge Project – Water-Solvent Epistemologies and Interconnected Bodies

The Sponge Project explores the deep analogy between water and information, proposing a water-solvent epistemology to understand a world made of permeable, interconnected bodies. Life on this watery planet is shaped by constant exchanges: we are soaked, permeated, influenced, and contaminated by the watery information of human and nonhuman “others.” These fluid connections—from mingling DNA to ecological dependencies—form the hidden infrastructure of coexistence.

Actively experiencing these conditions transforms how we perceive ourselves and our environment, with implications for personal, social, and political awareness.

Research Focus

The Sponge Project investigates:

• Aquatic sponges and their biological strategies

• Spongy structures across nature—plants, fungi, soils—that store, filter, release, and redistribute moisture

• Metaphors of sponginess in human bodies, memory, perception, and communication

• Water management principles, including the ecological and urban concept of sponge cities, inspired by natural systems balancing droughts and floods

The research merges artistic inquiry, ecofeminist theory, and environmental thinking, drawing on frameworks by Donna Haraway, Astrida Neimanis, Anna Tsing, and others to rethink the interconnectedness of bodies and environments.

Artistic Output

The project generates multisensory, participatory formats that translate spongy qualities into embodied experience. Key themes include permeability, soaking, holding and releasing, porosity, and filtering.

Developed artistic formats include:

• Sponge Meditations – guided embodied practices exploring permeability

• Sediment Sessions – performative encounters with layered materials and memories

• Sponge Cake Buffets – multispecies settings involving soil, water, plants, animals, and fungi as informants or “territorial soaks”

These interventions invite audiences to feel and reflect on the spongy entanglements that shape ecological and social worlds.

Background and Journey

The Sponge Project was initiated by Regina Hügli in winter 2024/25 while co-teaching Experimental Project Workwith Elisabeth Kopf at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Since then, it has informed multiple artistic and interdisciplinary collaborations.

The project contributed to the co-design of the Fluid Interdisciplinarities Festival (October 2025), created in cooperation with: IRI THESys – Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems, Humboldt University Berlin, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, University of Montpellier. Knowledge Exchange with Society team, TA T – Tieranatomisches Theater at the ZfK, Berlin