Radina Kordova: From the source to the mouth and everything in between

Kunsthuis Syb is happy to announce From the source to the mouth and everything in between, a research and temporal performance by Radina Kordova.

From the source to the mouth and everything in between is an embodied research performance that consists of the artist following the entire 2,850-kilometre course of the Danube River, from its source in Germany’s Black Forest to its Romanian delta at the Black Sea. Through walking, listening, sensory documentation, and score-based actions, Kordova witnesses the river as a living presence and reflects on ecology, memory, identity, and belonging. 

The project emerges from a long-standing personal relationship of the artist with the Danube. Having lived in Ruse, Bulgaria, on the river’s banks, Kordova understands the Danube not merely as a geographical feature but as a living entity with agency, memory, and voice. Returning to the river after more than a decade living in the north of the Netherlands, she follows its flow across Europe to reconsider notions of home, cultural belonging, and interdependence.

Kordova adopts methodologies from psychogeography, hydrofeminism, and embodied research. The artist approaches the river as both guide and collaborator. Unlike the more common migratory routes from East to Western Europe, Kordova moves in the opposite direction. As she walks from west to east through Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania, she gathers sensory, spatial, and political traces. Body and river become parallel archives, absorbing and processing encounters, landscapes, histories, and ecological realities along the way.

In this project, the river Danube is seen as a narrator. The long walk opens up questions of both non-human and human-centred understandings of landscape and identity. The work asks how an emblematic European river shapes cultural memory and how new forms of empathy and ecological awareness can emerge through attentive practices of walking and listening. The river becomes a unifying current, connecting diverse histories, species, communities, and environments while continuously transforming itself.

Throughout the journey, Kordova shares regular updates through her social media. At the end of each month, Kordova sends a journey letter that is distributed through the website of Kunsthuis Syb and on October 30, she gives a lecture-performance on her experiences at Kunsthuis Syb in Beetsterzwaag. 

From the source to the mouth and everything in between is part of Artist in Space, a talent development programme of the Noordenaars, a network of more than 16 artspaces in the northern regions of the Netherlands (Friesland, Drenthe, Groningen). The whole Artist in Space program takes one year and after her return Kordova works towards transforming the gathered documentation into a film and soundpiece.

Route: Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania

July 3–September 30, 2026, from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. October 30, 2026, lecture performance at Kunsthuis Syb at 5pm.

About the artist
Radina Kordova (1994) is a Bulgarian visual artist based in Groningen, the Netherlands. Working across performance, sound, sculpture, and text, her practice explores the entanglement of human and ecological worlds. Through embodied research, folklore, cultural memory, and post-anthropocentric perspectives, she creates multilayered works that invite audiences to engage with questions of belonging, interdependence, and more-than-human relations. Kordova holds a BA in Fine Arts from Academie Minerva and an MA in Media, Art, Design and Technology from the Frank Mohr Institute, Groningen.