LEARNING CURVES
Project and research | Alessandro Carboni
Production | Formati Sensibili (2010-2013)
With the support |The Library by soundpocket, Hong Kong; Italian Cultural Institute and the Consulate General of Italy in Hong Kong; CCDC – City contemporary dance company and CCDC Dance Centre, Hong Kong; Bamboo Curtain Studio Art in Residence Program, Taipei; Urban Place Unit – Wallace Chang Ping Hung, Hong Kong the Unit for Community Building is formally part of the Department of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1aspace Gallery, Hong Kong; Department of Architecture of Tamkang University; South China University of Technology (Guangzhou, PRC); Festival Danza Urbana; CastelloinMovimento Fosdinovo.
Learning Curves is an interdisciplinary research project that investigates urban rivers as spaces of contact and transformation between the natural and the urban landscape. The project considers rivers as dynamic archives—living systems that embody the traces of human activity, industrial production, and social, cultural, and environmental heritage. For the artist, urban rivers are not marginal elements, but central agents of transformation, where natural and artificial forces coexist in a fragile yet generative balance. Between 2010 and 2013, the project unfolded across multiple contexts, including the Kai Tak River, Lizhiwan Creek, and Shing Mun River in Hong Kong, the Danshui River in Taiwan, and the Aposa and Magra Rivers in Italy. Each site was approached through walking, mapping, and performative actions, using the body as a sensing tool to record the changing morphology and memory of water. Through installations, drawings, and performances, Learning Curves reveals the river as a living map of coexistence, where ecological processes and human gestures continuously reshape one another.