Parading is a tactic that works as a strategic tool in a time of climate crisis, increasing privatization of resources, and declining public awareness of ecological systems. It is a collective, physical way of bringing urgent environmental issues back into shared attention. More than a visual spectacle, parading offers a slow, deliberate method for introducing ideas into public space and everyday thinking. To parade in this way is to insist that water is not merely a resource to be extracted, but a vital element connecting people, places, and ecosystems.

The blue cloth, originally gifted by Teatro Oficina in São Paulo to Salve Saracura, has since flooded the streets to make the Saracura River resurface symbolically. As the River Cloth passes from hand to hand, it reminds participants that we are already woven into a global water cycle. The question becomes: how can we heighten our awareness of this interconnection, and how can we act together in response?

Echoing the blue cloth in Berlin, Floating members developed the Wasserkostbar—a water tasting bar created during Floating’s Kidsuni in 2023. This portable device travels through workshops and, as in the photo, was taken to a protest march in March 2025 along the River Spree in Berlin.

For the closing parade of the Planetary Confluences festival at Floating, the River Cloth was brought from São Paulo, allowing this gesture to carry the knowledge of waterways from across the world and let them flow together.

Two years earlier at Floating, during the Sowing Days, another parade marked the site of a destroyed reedbed—an act of grieving and dissent. Caught in a dispute with authorities, the community was no longer permitted to enter the water. Their response: What if we walk on chairs? And so, elevated above the ground, they moved together while reading aloud letters filled with memories of the reeds.