In May 2022, residents of the beautiful Slovakian city of Košice witnessed some strange-looking containers arriving on trucks. Once they settled safely in the Kasárne Kulturpark, the blue boxes opened up and so the story of the Floating Exhibition aka 'FLEX', has began. 'What is this blue box?' asked a young mother of two small kids, just passing by. 'It's an exhibition about rivers' I answered as I tried to open a large box written FRAGILE all over it. 'We open tomorrow.'

field report by Attila D. Molnár

Shortly after arrival, the blue boxes start to open up

They walked on. As I kept trying to get the large photoprints out, I could not help wondering. Did I really say rivers? Did I skip the hundreds of tons of plastic and other toxic materials polluting our waterways, just as I 'forgot' the million ways we try in the Tid(y)Up project to research, measure, collect and recycle the massive flood of plastic? As the cardboard box opened up with a scratching sound and the prints poured out in front of me, I had to admit that this exhibition, after all, IS about rivers. About how to clean them up, how to get them back. Rivers, as they once were. Clean, healthy, wild. For sure rivers can cause a lot of problems. Sometimes they threaten cities and people - probably the very cause why in the old times people of Kosice decided to divert the river from old downtown to its outskirts - but honestly, we cannot live without them. Rivers are the key for our survival. 

Two hours and three scrathes later, with all the photos set, I looked around. From the blue nets hanging from above, through the marine containers on all sides, down to the wooden floor beneath my feet, everything here is recycled, reclaimed and reused. FLEX, from the very beginning, was to be a zerowaste exhibition. For we think this is the only way to talk honestly about plastics in rivers. It was not easy, to create an exhibition like this. Going to a store and buy brand new things from the shelf would have been much easier. But doing so, we would have just generated more waste. So we have chosen the hard way. We tried to build everything - from the exhibition area down to the smallest exhibition item - from recycled materials. And now, with all the pictures neatly hanging from the net that once povided safety for construction workers doing their job in great heights, time has come to step out of the blue box.

The exhibition features the activities and results of Interreg project Tid(y)Up

The crew did their best but was still far from being ready. From the look of Csabi and Kata, I saw that they are having a hard time setting up the Riverine Trashlab in the second container. In the third blue box, Zsolt was arranging the video corner, while Csanád made sure that all ladders are firmly attached to each of the boxes. Why ladders? So that people can get onboard. Literally. Because on FLEX, you feel like you are on a boat. To create this maritime impression, we made sure every blue container is looking like a ship. Most of them have big sails hoisted on big masts, one even have a huge helm, not to mention the portholes. And in the middle of all this, a blue kayak. A real 'plastic pirate boat' as we like to say, for it is made a 100% of recycled waste from the river. Sounds great, but it was already getting too late - and dark. Heni came to help us out in her freetime, from the Agency for the Support of Regional Development Košice - our host organization. After her regular hours, Heni was trying the figure out the descriptions for each photo. Not an easy feat when you have more than a hundred. Clearly, this zerowaste exhibition concept puts the entire team under great stress. Hopefully, not too much.

Lenka from the Agency for the Support of Regional Development Košice is guiding a tour

The next day we skip breakfast to put the finishing touches on FLEX. And the 60 or so students arriving first at 8 a.m. sharp, find us and FLEX ready. For the showtime to begin first we divide the kids in 4 teams. One by one they will learn about how rivers get polluted, and how in the Tid(y)Up project we measure and manage this pollution. To send the message through, we use interactive methods. We encourage kids to ask, and to participate. And for some reason, they are happy to join in, to grind plastic bottle caps themselves, to sit in the kayak and make a selfie, and to attend the Riverine Trashlab programs. No one leaves FLEX empty handed. Each visitor is getting a pen, a carabiner, or a ruler/liner for school, all made from recycled plastics. By the afternoon, schoolchildren start to leave for the weekend. Translators like Lenka and Zoltán exchange excited glances with the animators. We all agree that the FLEX concept seems to work. Kids are getting the hang of it, right away. They seem to appreciate that FLEX is different from everything they have seen before.

Big boxes show the most important stages between river pollution and a recreational boat.

After a short brake a new set of visitors start to arrive. Families of all kinds. A father with a baby in his neck, a refugee family from Ukraine with gradma, and grandkids, and the young mother from yesterday, with her bigger son. He likes the plastic pirate cannon the most. This is when we literally fire a plastic bottle up into the skies by using an ordinary bike pump. He is so excited that we ask him if he wants to see the rocket car? The answer is a yes. And from then on we launch the plastic bottle rocket car time after time. A great way to show how recycling, science and fun can go hand in hand.

Injecting recycled plastic in the Riverine Trashlab - great fun and exercise

FLEX, like a real ship, sails steady, no matter how many people come on board. It is good to imagine how good it will be looking when we finally will put these containers on the water. Yes, it is the plan. To put this exhibition onboard an old ferry and start to sail the Danube downstream as far as Bulgaria. I hope this will help us to reach new countries and new people. And I hope that with surging prices, we can do everything as planned in the project proposal. To carry on, a young girl is giving us the sign. She is sitting in her mother's lap in the Riverine Trashlab holding a flower pot in her hands. The colorful thing, still warm, was a handful of shredded plastic just minutes ago, but then Csabi and Bendi turned it into a beautiful piece of zerowaste art.

- Mommy, this is the best exhibition I have every seen. - she said - Can we stay just a little longer?

See this VIDEO about the first stage of the FLEX tour

photos by Terézia Panková

additional photos by Csanád Ivánffy, Kata Vészity, Szilárd Balassy

to read more about FLEX, please visit earlier posts on the subject by clicking HERE and HERE or search for #dtptidyup #interregtidyup