On 27 March 2026, Meeting of Waters marked World Water Day in Skopje with the launch of a six-month public consultation on the sustainable management of the Vardar River basin — North Macedonia's first step toward a six-year river basin plan aligned with European Union water-framework standards. Convened through a Swiss-funded Water Management Programme in partnership with North Macedonia's environment and agriculture authorities, the day opened the process to citizens, institutions and experts, under the theme that water is not merely a resource but value, memory, movement and life.
Founder Charlotte Qin presented a live watercolor installation exploring water's living nature, while a panel discussion turned to water access, management, and gender equality — extending Meeting of Waters' work of holding space for water as both a governance question and a lived, felt relationship.
The Vardar carries most of North Macedonia's water on its way from the mountains at Vrutok to the Aegean Sea. It is the country's central artery, yet like most rivers, it is easier to cross than to truly see. Our performance set out to change that: to let an audience feel the river's character — its rising and falling, its rhythm, its memory — through the body and the senses rather than through data alone. Combining live artistic performance with an immersive digital river body, the piece translated the Vardar's hydrological life into something perceivable and shared, developed by Imagine360.
The five movements of the work — creating, collecting, cascading, corrupting, circulating — followed the river through its whole existence, echoing the poet Christoph Stückelberger's meditation on the shared miracle of water, tree, and body.
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