Camille De Toledo

TOWARDS AN INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF RIVERS

The story of a journey, a path between the arts and languages...

Camille de Toledo was born in 1975. He has been living in Berlin for around fifteen years. A writer, theorist, artist and researcher, his practice is hard to pigeonhole. After studying history, then law and literature, he continued at the LSE in London and in 2004 was awarded a Villa Medici fellowship for his video and literary work. In 2008, he founded the European Society of Authors, an institution proposing to adopt "translation as a language." From 2012--2013, when he moved to Berlin, he began working on expanded forms of writing. This led to the video opera The Fall of Fukuyama in 2013, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, then, in 2015--2016, in Leipzig at the Halle 14-Spinnerei Art Centre; the cycle L'Exposition potentielle, History Reloaded, Europa -- Eutopia and Capitalist Melancholia. His work over the last twenty years has been concerned with memories, spectres, vertigo, translation, and in particular the translation of natural forms of life. He has become one of the leading European figures in the struggle to grant rights to natural entities, through projects such as "The Loire Parliament" (2019--2021) and "Towards an International Network of Rivers." A finalist for the Prix Goncourt in 2021 and winner of the Franz Hessel Prize for Thésée, sa vie nouvelle, in 2022 he was made a research associate at the Institut d'Études Avancées de Nantes, where he aims to work towards a transformative narrative -- an art of the "coming law." In 2025--2026, he was artist-in-residence at the theatre in Vidy-Lausanne, in connection with the stage adaptation of Thésée, sa vie nouvelle by actress Valérie Dréville and director Guy Cassiers. With the "International Network of Rivers" project, Toledo will be responsible for one of the key platforms of the European Capital of Culture, in Bourges and across the Centre region, in 2028, and in this capacity will frame the narrative of two major exhibitions, Changer de monde and Le corps d'une rivièr, as well as a collaboration with FRAC Orléans on "living architectures." To this end, he will work, in particular, with the Haute École des Arts du Rhin (HEAR) and Le Fresnoy, as an artist and visiting lecturer. It is there that he will compose one of the pieces for Le corps d'une rivière, in collaboration with the Belgian artist and set designer Esther Denis...

A few words on the narrative and the "International Rivers" platform...

Launched in 2022, theInternational Network of Riversis an artistic and research project centred on rivers and the hydrosphere as a whole. It seeks to harness the power of art and storytelling in order to support human communities seeking to rethink their ecosystems not as resources but as living entities.

Across several continents, theInternational Network of Riverssupports a growing movement seeking to recognise the rights -- and legal existence -- of natural forms and processes other than human beings.

As part of the overarching narrative for Bourges 2028 -- European Capital of Culture, International Rivers will unfold a narrative with three "branches":

1/ The "laws to come": workshops across the region, discussions with the National Assembly, support for a European citizens' initiative in favour of the rights of nature, and, in 2028, "assembly-banquets" held in conjunction with festivals throughout the Centre-Val de Loire region.

2/ Exhibitions: working alongside institutions and partners in the Centre-Val de Loire region to devise "stories through art" so as to explore this changing world "with the rights of nature" (CCCOD, Château de Tours, FRAC Centre-Val de Loire, etc.)

3/ Associated narratives: by supporting cultural projects across the region and in Europe: notably, the trans-European "Batolabo" project extending to the Danube, and the "Rivers beyond Borders"project (with the Goethe-Institut and the Käthe Hamburger Kolleg -- CURE)...

A few words from Camille de Toledo on the installation he will be working on at Le Fresnoy over the coming year.

Let's call this forthcoming work, still to be conceived: Hydromonde. It is an installation that will be displayed alongside works by Carole Marchais, Camille de Chenay, Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, and Abdessemed Al Montassir at the CCCOD in 2028. The title is still under review. Let's say that the aim is to present a different vision of the world map. What we call "Earth" or "Erde" or "Adamah" in Hebrew is the subject here*.* We emphasise its solid aspect, as if we were still haunted by the story of the Flood. But following the work of the Hungarian cartographer Robert Szucs, who depicts the Earth's surface from the perspective of "watersheds," what we see is an entirely different version. Like the veins of an organism, the various branches of a body's nervous system, or the living ramifications of a plant, the Earth is sculpted by water, by rivers and their tributaries. It is this vision that we wish to bring to life.