Hydra ∼ Hydrosphere
Malin Bülow (SE/NO) / angela rawlings (CA/IS)
Malin bülow: Breathing with the ocean, performed by nathalie wahlberg (2018)
Photo: David Stjernholm
Exhibition
18 May - 3 June 2018
Our bodies are facilitated and sustained by the waters of the planet. We depend on hydrological movements; from ocean to atmosphere to land, and participate in the planetary water cycle. As bodies of water, we also carry water from one place to another. Our movement facilitates the movement of water, as water facilitates ours. We are (in) the hydrosphere.
How do we intra-act with the waters that flow in, through and between us? How do we choreograph the movement of water, and what kinds of choreographies do these new hydrologies stir us into?
Interferences in the hydrosphere have fatal consequences for life on earth. Dams that support megalopolises and agribusiness have led to the forced displacement of hundreds of millions of people, the majority being indigenous and ethnic minorities. The wastes of industry and capitalism are extensively poured into our watery commons, while the burning of fossil fuels degenerates the complex tangle of planetary currents and meteorological conditions that sustain the livelihoods of more-than-just-human worlds.
The exhibition Hydrosphere works in extension of the newly published translation of Astrida Neimanis’ Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water, which presents a watery understanding of our bodily connectedness. The exhibition explores what it means to be (in) a body of water, in both a corporeal and planetary sense. As bodies of water, we are always immersed in hydrospheric circulations, where our most intimate bodily fluids become planetary archives. Water connects us across bodies, species and landscapes, but also across scales. The exhibition presents site-specific and performative works that propose new hydrospheric choreographies.
Malin Bülow presents an installation that stages a symbiopoetic encounter between two bodies of water. Bodies and ecosystems meet in this ecotone for a mutual breathing. How are we mutually implicated by our shared waterways? How are the boundaries of our bodies extended due to their permeable membranes? How can we re-choreograph the space between us?
angela rawlings takes her point of departure in the destabilisation of North Atlantic ocean and wind currents. For her performance INTIME she invites us to move with planetary circulations on an Øresund foreshore. Together we move in counter-clockwise circles, and sense how it feels to move as bodies of water on a bigger scale. How can we learn from oceanic currents that are refigured, and that move “counter” to its common patterns of movement?
The exhibition took place on the beach, which represents a space in constant transformation, continuously re-negotiated by tides and made vulnerable by a changing hydrosphere. How can we learn to inhabit this place of unknowability of an uncertain future? How do we engage in non-destructive ways in watery circulations?
Malin Bülow (b. 1979, Sweden) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. Her work resides at the intersection between performance, sculpture and installation. Inspired by inside wetness, osmosis, permeability and equilibriums, she seeks to visualize the systems and connections between bodies, to grasp the human psyche in relation to a bigger psyche. She holds an MFA from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2016) and a BFA from Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2012). She also holds an MSc in neuroscience from the VU University in Amsterdam (2008) and a BSc in molecular biology from Lund University, Sweden (2005).
http://www.malinbulow.com/
angela rawlings is a Canadian-Icelandic poet and an artist approaching questions of ecopoet(h)ics and relational empathy between bodies from multidisciplinary, multisensorial, and multilingual vantages. rawlings’ practice spans sensorial poetries, vocal and contact improvisation, theatre of the rural, and conversations with landscapes. Her books include Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), o w n (CUE BOOKS, 2015), and si tu (MaMa, 2017). Her libretti include Bodiless (for Gabrielle Herbst, 2014) and Longitude (for Davíð Brynjar Franzson, 2014). rawlings is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow researching how to perform geochronology in the Anthropocene. rawlings loves in Iceland.
https://arawlings.myportfolio.com/
The exhibition is supported by Fonden Roskilde Festival, Helsingør Kommune, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and Nordisk kulturkontakt.
Special thanks to performer Nathalie Wahlberg, photographer David Stjernholm, The Danish Coastal Authority and author of Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water Astrida Neimanis.
