The Water Office explores the current debate on global water challenges through artistic practices, presenting art both as a tool of action and a key element to rethink the importance of artistic practices in relation to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Back in 1995, Ismael Serageldin, former vice president of the World Bank warned: "if the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water -- unless we change our approach to managing this precious and vital resource".
The project The Water Office seeks to offer, through artistic practices, a platform for dissenting voices to function as "trenches" in the “water wars” which were predicted at the end of the last century and have already begun.
Art presents itself as a useful tool of resistance that addresses climate change and the environmental crisis, giving cultural practices the perfect context...to align themselves with the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The 2030 Agenda stablishes not only specific objectives that have water at its core, such as SDG6, Clean water and sanitation, and SDG14, Underwater life, but it might be also considered that Water, due to the transversal character of the 17 objectives, is the crucial articulator of all of them.
The exhibition will take the shape of an open laboratory showing the experimental works resulting of collaborative practices after a series of workshops led by artists from Spain, Mexico, and USA.
Juanli Carrión and Juan Zamora will visualize the levels of water pollution through two original but different strategies.
With PHDC Carrión will use textile dyes of food origin which vary in colour depending on the acidity of the water to analyse the contamination of different water systems of Washington DC. Participants will use locally cultivated red cabbage to create ph-sensitive dyes that will impregnate cotton cloths that will reveal the different levels of water contamination in a variety of colours ranging from red to yellow and blue.
Through The Coliform Project: Performing Water, Zamora will develop a workshop aiming to interpret contaminated water samples cultured in petri dishes as music sheets to be performed by local musicians. After the participants take and culture the samples of water, the samples will be also performed at Sound Scene 2019: Amplify presented by DC Listening Lounge at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Inspired by Humboldt, the first scientist to warn about climate change, Tania Candiani proposes a literary experience and visual recording while walking along the Potomac River, Arroyo Rock River and water reservoirs.With Walking the River, the artist will show the result of a workshop where participants read texts about construction projects that changed the river landscape, climate change, and urbanization to create literary descriptions and video art. The result: an installation with video, handwritten notes, maps and documents.
Basurama and Rachel Schmidt will create time capsules in order to make visible how the water cycle works when we consider industries, transport, and waste as part of it. Through Water Memories Itinerant Office the participants will gather stories about water, which will be “bottled” in different formats, including images, drawings, texts, projections, and sounds to be preserved, shared, and heard. The goal is to reflect on the unequal access to water, its quality, scarcity, droughts, and decrease of reservoirs levels, but also to think about solutions, proposals, and ways of recovering ecosystems.
Elena Lavellés will “contaminate” social media platforms with environmental information about water sustainability and energy use. Under the title Strategic Contamination: Viral Sustainability, she will take her participants to the largest treatment plant in the world, the Water Plant Advanced Waste Treatment Plant in Washington DC to work on a viral campaign in social media using images, designs, and information gathered during the visit.
In conclusion, all the proposals demonstrate, through different perspectives, that art appears as an effective space to address the current ecocide and a very suitable way to take a stand on reality as well as positive awareness in order to lead the way toward a possible change of paradigm that will end up in a more sustainable future for everybody.
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The Water Office
Entrada actualizada el el 27 jun de 2019
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