The internationale of rivers is an art and research project connected to the world’s waters — rivers, lagoons, wetlands, lakes, seas, and oceans — in order to empower with art and new narratives the human communities who seek to recognize them not as resources, but as living entities. Across continents, it accompanies a growing movement to grant legal personhood to natural forms and processes, affirming that they, too, carry memory, agency, and a claim to justice.

The internationale of rivers works, namely, on a shift in perspective : to see natural entities as a living workforce - parallel to human work - whose energies have long been absorbed by extractivist economies. Natural processes and ecosystems sustain life, they are mobilised and used in the diverse chains of production. To see them as participants in a shared social world implies imagining an agenda where they can claim better working conditions, and a more equitable recognition of their own rhythms and time-scales.