WORKSHOP SERIES BY YI-TING WANG
WHEN
WHERE
Völklinger Hütte World Heritage Site, main entrance / car park
Rathausstraße 75-79, 66333 Völklingen
LANGUAGE
GERMAN
PROGRAMME
River Walk is a series of on-site explorations along the Saar in June and July 2026, each led by a regional expert. Historian Birgit Metzger walks visitors through living polluted archives at the Rossel–Saar confluence near Völklinger Hütte. Environmental organisation Cleanup Saarland uses citizen-science methods to interpret debris carried downstream as material records of consumption. Historian Susanne Nimmesgern brings to light the forgotten histories of boatwomen, female brewers, and female ironworks directors along the riverbank. Geographer Jochen Kubiniok reads the river’s hundred-million-year geological transformation through canals, meanders, and
oxbow lakes. Hydrologist Isabelle Charpentier explores alternative scenarios of flooding, military legacy, renaturation, and aquatic well-being. Together, River Walk offers a situated way of navigating the postindustrial riverscape, and opens a space to reimagine the Saar’s future.
SATURDAY, 13 JUNE, 3:00 PM — 5:00 PM:
Industrie-Natur | The Nature of De-Industrialisation
Workshop with Dr. Birgit Metzger (historian, Saarland University).
The tour traces the long history of industrial pollution in and around the Völklingen industrial site. It focuses on how industrial emissions affected the air, water, soil, and vegetation, and on how local residents and authorities dealt with the resulting pollution. The tour leads from the World Heritage Site across the Saar to the mouth of the Rossel, formerly known as Europe’s dirtiest river, then to Wehrden, a former working-class neighbourhood in the immediate vicinity of the industrial area, and ends in the wild landscape garden at the Völklingen Ironworks called Paradise, where nature appears to be reclaiming the site following its closure.
- Meeting point: Völklinger Hütte World Heritage Site, main entrance / car park – Soil
- Mouth of the Rossel – Water and mining
- Boat landing stage on the Saar – Transport and canalisation
- Workers’ houses in Wehrden – Air, health, and migration
- Endpoint: Paradise – De-Industrialisation and “healing”?
IN KOOPERATION WITH
FURTHER WORKSHOPS IN THE RIVER WALK SERIES:
SATURDAY, 27 JUNE 2026, 10:00 AM — 12:00 PM
Was die Saar mit sich trägt | The Saar’s Carried Objects
Cleanup Saarland e.V.
SUNDAY, 28 JUNE 2026, 10:00 AM — 12:00 PM
Frauen und die Saar | Women and the Saar
Dr. Susanne Nimmesgern
SATURDAY, 4 JULY 2026, 1:00 PM — 3:00 PM
Simulation und Spiel an der Saar | Simulation and Gaming for the Saar
Dr. Isabelle Charpentier
Participation in the workshops is free. You can register for the workshops here.
Conceived and organised by Yi-Ting Wang, River Walk is part of her fellowship at CURE. Her current research project REPAIR (Reparative Environmental Practices: Art and rreparable Riverscapes) investigates how artistic and situated practices engage with post-industrial riverscapes, fostering environmental knowledge from the river, rather than merely about it.
This event is part of the Rivers Beyond Borders project.
Participation in the workshops is free. You can register for the workshops here.