21 Days - 21 Pools: Searching for traces in swimming pools

Prof. Dr. Christoph Lutz-Scheurle(Opens in a new tab)  from the Faculty of Applied Social Studies undertook an artistic field research trip to Iceland with the artist collective "MSG". There, they explored the bathing culture and examined the swimming pool as a place of encounter and social cohesion in the country.

While outdoor pools and swimming pools in Iceland serve as places where different people can meet and mingle, in Germany the outdoor pool is marked as a "dangerous place". With this label, the outdoor pool is in danger of being lost as a place of social mixing. This affects "people [...] who are running out of options in overcrowded city centers to get access to relaxation and cooling off without spending a lot of money", as the newspaper Die Zeit critically notes. So while the outdoor pool debate in Germany is further proof of the country's division, swimming pools in Iceland are important places of cohesion that provide access to all social classes. In the hot pools, which can reach temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celsius, many a visitor will get into speeches and discuss politics and society. There are around 170 outdoor swimming pools on the island and no matter how small a place may be, there is almost always a swimming pool to be found.

The MSG collective, consisting of Melanie Hinz(Opens in a new tab) , Stefan Mießeler(Opens in a new tab) , Lukas Müller, Wendy Pladeck and Christoph Lutz-Scheurle, traveled around the island in 21 days and bathed in 21 pools with the support of the European "Culture Moves" programme(Opens in a new tab) . They explored the extent to which the swimming pool as a social space contributes to the well-being of the Icelandic people. (Iceland is the third happiest country in the World Happiness Report 2023, with Germany in 17th place). As part of this artistic research trip, which used methods of participant observation as well as artistic interventions in public space, the pool proved to be a place of participatory practices and cohesion and the swimming pool a social meeting space.

On the one hand, swimming pools serve here as platforms in which political discourse takes place; on the other hand, they prove to be special, aesthetically emphasized places in which the habitual self-positioning of the visitors can be understood as forms of representation in which a specific self-image and the identity of the visitors find expression.

This led MSG to critically question its own participatory practices of social participation and to test them in new contexts. The first results were photographic experiments in which imaginations on the subject of bathing were staged in dramaturgically exaggerated situations. This was also because it became clear that the aesthetic experience of bathing can only be experienced in the performative act of bathing itself. The (un)availability and the pool as a place of longing are thus reflected in the photos.

The research is to culminate in an artistic installation at a later date. In this, a special Icelandic hot pool will be faithfully recreated on a 1:1 scale. Large-format projections of the Icelandic landscapes documented during the trip will be displayed around the pool. At the same time, the pool will be bathed in so that visitors can interact with the performers in the form of "social rounds" and experience the pool for themselves as a place of encounter.