The Sponge Project takes the analogy of water and information as a base to dive into a water-solvant epistemology of body and mind and a theoretic and practical approach to a world of interconnected bodies.

Being soaked, permeated, influenced or contaminated by the watery information of “others”  – human or nonhuman – is the condition life on this watery planet*. We are all involved in manifold watery unions with „others“. Life itself springs from the endless combinations of mingling and transforming DNA.

To actively experience and reflect on this condition can have a transformative impact on perceiving the world and oneself – on a personal scale or on a social and political one.

The Sponge Project researches both on the aquatic animal sponge and on the qualities of spongy structures in order to create a new way of approaching and imagining the world. It engages sponge metaphors and reflects on what they reveal – e.g. the central analogy of water and information, or the  “spongyness” of human bodies, perception and memory. 

The project develops practices and interventions offering multisensory experiences for body and mind. Special attention was given on permeability and soaking processes, the capacity to hold and release and filtering methods.

Three artistic outflows have been developed so far: Sponge Meditations, Sediment Sessions and Sponge Cake Banquet, the latter involving soil, water, plants, animals and fungi as informants or “soaks” of territories.

Journey:
The sponge project was developed by Regina Hügli in Winter 2024/25 while co-lecturing “Experimental Project Work” with Elisabeth Kopf at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. It now informs art practices and events by the artist, e.g. is it influencing the co-designing process of the “Fluid Interdisciplinarities” Festival October 2025 in cooperation with the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems, Humboldt University (IRI THESys), the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education,  the University of Montpellier, the Knowledge Exchange with Society team and the TA T – Tieranatomisches Theater at the ZfK (Hermann von Helmholtz Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Berlin).

*Theoretical background to the watery conditions of life and the interconnectedness of bodies was provided by the inspiring writings of ecofeminist thinkers Donna Haraway and Astrida Neimanis, and anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing a.o.