Alba Balmaseda, Kathrin Doppler, Ines Lechleitner
Artistic Research Group
We share a common interest in water (in its multiple forms, meanings, and spaces) approached from different yet complementary perspectives. Alba has completed a doctoral thesis on spatial practices of urban bathing, as well as somatic and ethnographic explorations of thermal sites. Ines has worked extensively with water and rivers, using photography, perfume, food, and body imprints. Kathrin is the curator of the thermal bath–museum Bad zum Raben in Baden, where bathing culture is not only practiced but also actively contextualised through artistic and curatorial programmes. Our previous collaborations have brought together teaching, architecture, artistic practice, situated research and curatorial work in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Working across disciplines, we have developed site-specific projects, workshops, exhibitions, photographic and olfactory works, and performative formats that translate research processes into collective and sensory experiences. This shared path continues this year with an artistic residency at WUSHU in Trapani, followed by the Volcanic Attitude Festival. The resulting work will subsequently be reactivated in Baden, Berlin, Bad Fischau, and Drosendorf.
Bathing Vulcano
We are currently imagining two interconnected dimensions. On the one hand, an ongoing artistic research process carried out by our group throughout the festival, focused on bathing practices, volcanic landscapes, and the ways in which encounters with water can shape our experience of place. This research would inform and become part of the collective experience.
On the other hand, we are imagining a collective, site-responsive experience together with the participants connected with bathing culture. Through simple actions, storytelling, and encounters with the thermal landscape, participants would be invited to reflect on transformation, geological time, and the ways water connects bodies and places. This proposal builds on previous experiences and methodologies that we have developed and participated in over the years.
Selection of recent exhibitions / projects / conferences
Alba Balmaseda (A Coruña, Spain) combines architectural practice with research and teaching. Her work explores public space, the body–space relationship, and architectural materiality through design, performance, and full-scale construction. She graduated as an architect from ETSAM (2010) and holds a PhD from the Università degli Studi di Roma Tre (2024). Alba founded her architectural practice in 2014 and has taught at ESTAM (2011), UCJC (2016), Stuttgart Universität (2018–2025), and TH Nürnberg (2025). She is co-founder of the association Performing Space and in Autumn 25 she was an Art & Science Fellow at the Instituto Svizzero in Palermo. www.albabalmaseda.com
Kathrin Doppler (Baden, Switzerland) is a choreographer, body researcher and curator of various disciplines. She curates visual arts at Bad zum Raben thermal spa, Bagni Popolari, theatre at the Basel Puppet Theatre Festival BAFF! and pop music and video art at Royal Baden. Before her master‘s degree in transdisciplinarity from the Zurich University of the Arts, she studied at the Universities of Bern, Basel and Sorbonne in Paris religious studies, theatre and dance, as well as dance training in Germany. Her artistic work flows around the boundaries of performance art, contemporary dance and object theatre. Sobject, a collaboration with Rosie Terry Toogood was shown in Cuba, England and Switzerland. www.bagnopopolare.ch
Ines Lechleitner (Vienna, Austria) is an olfactory artist, photographer and chef specializing in interdisciplinary dialogues and multisensory storytelling through photography, scent and food. Lechleitner studied at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris), the NSCAD College for Art and Design (Halifax), and the San Francisco Art Institute, followed by a postgraduate research degree at the Jan Van Eyck Academie (Maastricht). Her work has been shown and shared internationally, including at: Museum CA2M (Madrid), M Museum (Leuven), Weltkulturenmuseum (Frankfurt), Museum für zeitgenössische Kunst Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, DE), Fondation Cartier (Paris), Kunstraum Niederösterreich (Vienna, AT), NGbK (Berlin), and MUHKA (Antwerp, BE). www.ines-l.com www.ineslechleitner.com
Places
M/N Laurana Stromboli>Vulcano
Spiaggia delle acque calde, baia di Levante, Vulcano
