Through the Danube, the project positions a mega-dam as an enabling infrastructure that reconfigures the river as a continuous political, ecological and energy system through which energy-based sovereignty can emerge. Contextualised by the legacy of the Yugoslavian dams, it speculates on the emergence of the hydro-state. Here, diplomacy is not solely tied to technocracy but to the river’s health and flows.

Hydroelectric infrastructure promises unity, progress and sustainability, yet simultaneously generates displacement, dependency and new geopolitical frictions. The acceleration of renewable energy transitions intensifies this condition, producing new financial assets, extractive frontiers, and competing territorial claims under the guise of decarbonisation.

Energy abundance reorganises the river into a material network, producing new archipelagos, altered climates and emergent economies. The project ultimately questions our own ‘sustainable contradictions’: what degrees of transformation do we collectively choose to accept, reject or tolerate within our own understanding of ‘sustainability’?