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Water Bodies

For the exhibition  water bodies – narratives of the anthropocene  at Mahalla Berlin, nine artists from Africa, Latin America and Europe came together – as part of a documenta fifteen residency. They have dealt with the theme in very different ways: Their strategies range from whistle blowing to reflection, from documentation and shocking to healing.

Juste Constant Onana Amougui, Isadora Canela, Hugo Haddad, Lis Haddad, Esther Kute, Thaís Paiva Machado, Theophilus Mensah, Shonisani Netshia, Christian Kabuß

19.8.2022 – 21.8.2022, MaHalla Berlin

In cooperation with Benjamin Merten (thx again) and Joachim Borner (Projekthof Karnitz)

Joint opening with Jim Avignon
Joint opening with Jim Avignon

Water Bodies – Narratives of the Anthropocene

By Benjamin Merten

Fahrenheit -459,67 is the temperature at which paper sets fire. Brazilian artist, Isadora Canela, carefully and patiently returns to this exact temperature in her creation of the artwork with ‘fire on paper’. Through experimentation, Canela reveals a dystopian landscape that once alive, now erodes, quite literally into flames. At its centre, a human figure walks away from a burning habitat and faces the spectator – desperate, bewildered and in search of words that capture a collapsing world.

The artwork was part of the exhibition Water Bodies – Narratives of the Anthropocene at MaHalla, which showed the work of nine artists from Africa, Latin America and Europe who came together as part of the documenta fifteen residency. Meeting in Kassel within the framework of the EXPLORING VISUAL CULTURES program for the first time, the artists discussed their experiences and initial research on the Anthropocene in their respective countries. A collaborative process, which made space for honest exchange and specifically a conversation particularly resonant amongst artists experiencing the global consequences of exploitation and hyper-capitalism (from Brazil, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana to Cameroon).

Fahrenheit -459,67, fire on paper, 250cm x 130cm, 2022 by Isadora Canela

After their time at Kassel, the collective went on to a residency at Projekthof Karnitz in Mecklenburg Vorpommern, here, the artists were supported to transform theoretical discourse and impressions from the documenta fifteen into art.

Rooted and guided by their own personal experiences and cultural and artistic backgrounds, each participant formed ideas related to the multifaceted Anthropocene. During these discussions, water was quickly identified not only as an indispensable source of life, but also as a carrier of stories, meaning and hope. Integrating these ideas into their making process, the group then collectively decided on techniques and materials to best translate and articulate their conversations. Over the course of the project’s timelines the group realised various artworks which became site specific installations on their exhibition in Berlin.

Impressions from the residency in Karnitz, taken by Juste Constant Onana Amougui

Entering the cavernous industrial hall of the exhibition venue on the day of the opening, visitors were first met by Esther Kute’s, Theophilus Kwesi Mensah’s, Juste Constant Onana Amougui’s and Shonisani Netshia’s installation, titled the Foreigners Bag. This work was based on a bag that Kute had bought in 2015 on her previous visit to Germany. While buying the bag, she was assured it was real leather, which she intended to use resourcefully and pass on to future generations, therefore paying a large amount of money for it. However, within only four years, the bag proceeded to peel and degenerate in a way only synthetic, oil-based PU/PVC materials are capable of. Travelling back to Germany this year, Kute saw a great opportunity to return the bag to its original source.

Just like the Return to Sender art installation by The Nest Collective (also from Nairobi, Kenya), that Kute saw in Kassel, the award-winning textile and industrial design practitioner aimed to reduce, in a minuscule way, the export of waste from countries from the Global North to countries in the Global South, whilst creating awareness around the multitudinous damage the fast fashion industry inflicts on the environment.

The exhibition continued with a towering water fountain made of barrels, hoses and water – produced by the team led by Brazilian artists Thaís Machado and Isadora Canela. The title O amanhã não está a venda (2022) translates into the popular saying ‘The future is not for sale’ – which was written in various other languages, from Twi to Swahili, and refers to waste and overproduction of resources, which future generations face the consequence of. The sound of the water dripping from the fountain was amplified, so it acoustically and metaphorically emphasized that one day, there might not be any water left.

Theophilus Kwesi Mensah is a sculptor, painter and performer born in Ghana. Menshah led the art installation Clay Heads. The small human skulls which comprise this work are made from eco-friendly and biodegradable clay extracted from water bodies around Karnitz and assembled on silver trays, with empty water vessels hanging ominously above these sculptural pieces. The facial expression of each sculpture is marked by a disturbing and desperate thirst and yearning for water.

In a panel discussion between all the artists on day two of the exhibition, Mensah articulated the significance of pure water in the Ghanaian culture – also referring to his installation Bottles. Referring to his installation made of upcycled plastic kites, Hugo Haddad passionately responded to Mensah’s provocation, acknowledging how easily the world becomes imbalanced when ecosystems are threatened. Together with his Brazilian colleagues, Haddad is committed to researching and working on the exploitation of mines in the state of Minas Gerais and the repercussions on land, society and democracy in Brazil. Consequences that disproportionately affect countries in the Global South, where colonial empires started to drill for resources. A commentary that artist Shonisani Netshia portrayed in her abstract painting inspired by mining waste in South Africa.

The collaborative installation Becoming River was a 19-minute video projected on the same 124m long white fabric piece that was used in a performance two weeks prior to this exhibition, during the artists’ residency in Karnitz. The video shows all participating artists carrying the piece of fabric onto an arid and parched corn field in the evening light, located in an area in Eastern Germany that has been suffering acutely from global warming for years. With the white fabric laid down on the floor, it evoked the image of a river, revitalising a field that was harvested in late August. In their performance, the artists then ‘washed their clothes’ in the metaphorical river, an ode to traditional human labour, fast fashion consumption and the purifying energy of water.

In her artwork Amphora Uterus, Lis Haddad compares the privatization of water to the fertility of a female body.

As a photographer and filmmaker Hugo Haddad was responsible for a 2-channel video installation (Myriad, 2022) that interrogated the mining industry through a specialised AI program. Other outstanding works of the exhibition were paintings by Christian Kabuß, which showed the fragile constitution of man and the work of Juste Constant Onana Amougui responding to water pollution. Please refer to the individual artwork descriptions on this site for a more detailed description.

CONCLUSION

So what can we learn from this exhibition which attracted around 3.000 visitors, but was only up for a single weekend? As a starting point and framework, documenta fifteen focused on the process of art making in the context of people rather than the exhibition of shiny new artworks. Building upon this discourse, the exhibition WATER BODIES also showcased a collaborative spirit spanning across continents, playfully yet consciously exploring and researching our ever-evolving relationship with the world. By delving beneath the superficial layer that enshrouds the art market, the installations were able to tackle human emotions, existential quests and political mistrust in a tangible and genuine way.

The residencies in Kassel and Karnitz were able to create a safe space for the artists to learn from one another and re-write Eurocentric narratives. Coming up against ecological battlefields across the Global South, the artists negotiated ideas of possession, ownership and exploitation – concepts that continue to define individual mindsets and economic structures even long after the dawn of colonialism.

The artists’ immediate concerns, provoked audiences to rethink their global responsibility and re-connect with indigenous communities and the ancestral wisdom innate within these groups – a source of knowledge to understand and preserve our planet. Bringing an awareness to the urgency of drastic ecological changes that can be observed across the globe, the show also consolidated its political relevance.

In November, two months after the exhibition, a photo went viral on Instagram (or at least in the geo-targeted region of Berlin). The post showed a light projection on a skyscraper that is currently being erected in Berlin Friedrichshain: THE WRONG AMAZON IS BURNING – it said in capital letters and in opposition to the new Amazon Headquarter in Berlin. Another artistic intervention that proves the planetary vision that is informing art production and activism in the early 2020’s. A provocative statement that harks back to Isadora Canela and her play with fire:

”In 2022 the mountain in front of my house (in Brazil) set fire, the Amazon is burning, South Africa, Angola, US, Europe. Where there is not enough water, the world is on fire. Geographic and thermal extremes meet in the post-industrial apocalypse of the Capitalocene. This is not theoretical.“

Benjamin Merten
+49 (0)176 83447623
info@thxagain.com


Joachim Borner

Water Bodies – Narratives on the Anthropocene

A personal reflection

(1)

With the title – and the artistic task associated with it – there is first of all irritation: Is the topic not to be put to the sciences? Is it not their matter? This fundamental cultural technique of cognition – the science – would be primarily responsible for “calculating” what could be set in motion between necessities and possibilities in the societal metamorphoses. These are triggered, for example, by the climate crisis or the loss of water through overexploitation. That would be the expected narrative. And the narrators would also be fixed. 

Narratives about the Anthropocene have their own peculiarities: They take place at epochal thresholds and in hyper-complex processes. Neither of them can be coped with scientifically – at least not for the purpose of being able to imagine them. Scientific-empirical knowledge is not available for this. 

But perhaps – the arts can do that? Hegel and Marx propose that art is a specific form of knowledge, addressing emotions: art teaches us to know by exciting the feelings we would have if we knew. Art is recognizing and playing at the same time (Peter Hacks) and thereby predisposed to dare to reach even hyper-complex tipping points.

(2) 

That was the idea behind the residency in Karnitz. Between the summer school at documenta fifteen and the International Summer University in Karnitz, I invited nine artists from around the world to create (artistic) narratives on the anthropocene. They chose the title “waterbodies”. 

I have been working on narratives of the anthropocene (i.e. the Capitalocene) for several years, coming from the perspective of learning and communication theory. The International Summer University, founded 18 years ago in Santiago de Chile, is a format of (artistic) transdisciplinary research. Since then it addresses the question of how narratives across scientific and artistic disciplines might emerge, be developed, look like, be retold. Our goal has been to develop more plausible explanations of the world than the existing “utopian” myths of capitalism and to create alternative ways of artistic representation for a more culturally rich future of global-local humanity.  

In the back of my mind I have had the idea that artistic narratives could help to create global socio-cultural options for the survival of humanity. Art works could serve as alternative, narrative tools of perception and cognition. They may be able to contribute more intensely to the (urgently needed) change or transformation of world views and perspectives – including the human-nature metabolism and including the human-nature divide. Perhaps purely rational empiricisms of the sciences cannot deliver this. It is about a “grand narrative” that lies after or in the ruins of global modernity. 

(3) 

Some episodes from the residency in August 2022, when narratives were searched for and worked on, when they were created step by step: 

  • The video: a river laid in a dry field and people washed it, 
  • a well speaked that tomorrow is not for sale, 
  • water resources were packed and privatized behind barbed wire, 
  • refugees with no ground under their feet had nothing but the useless junk from discount stores – and that had always been for the poor,
  • the apocalyptic pianist … 

In the short time we were together I could cook for all of us – which is a damn good role to listen and to watch by being nearly “invisible”. To be there and yet not. To sympathize but not participate, to be near and to be distant. This role leads to cross thoughts. 

I saw and heard the nine artists working on their narratives about the anthropocene. What I could see, they obviously “struggled” with two main questions – namely, what is the anthropocene and what are narratives in and for it. 

There, I experienced two provocations for me: I have never seen that before and I have never seen it like that before. What happened?  

  1. A “changing of your mind” happened, a “conceptual breakthrough”, an unexpected understanding. It was not simply a surprise, but a kind of surprise that made comprehensible what was previously inscrutable or hidden in the blind spot of attention. And it was a surprise that involved a new kind of understanding. Understanding that one does not know exactly what has been understood, but that is based on trust.
  2. Through their artistic way (I assume that this can also happen in the sciences), the artists became “conceptual poets” who narrate in a way that has never been narrated before. Through their narratives ideas emerge and take shape. 
  3. By the way, when I narrate, I am more easily able to express not only what I think about the world – and about myself – but above all to make visible HOW I think. I have to connect with my own narrative (my understanding of the world, how it ticks, how it works, and through this giving me orientation. In turn, this enables me to make contact with the narratives of others around me. These narratives (or mental images) are the key for mutual understanding and also for accepting changes in the co-world. Art appears in the interaction between the artist, the creation and reception.
  4. When we tell each other stories, what makes up our view of the world? Our individual-specific patterns of explanation of the world, their conclusiveness – repeatedly assured in conversations – dominates our storytelling: the selection of facts and metaphors, of heroes and anti-heroes, the ways of describing conflicts, and so on. 
  5. In the individual case, it is mainly the emotional patterns of our explanations of the world that tell us how the world works out of our own logic of action. We act according to these patterns. This becomes relevant when many people choose a similar narrative, i.e. when a societal orientation result from collective narratives leading to collective actions. In this sense, narratives become established “grand narratives” giving coherent, meaningful orientation, endowed with “legitimacy”. 
  6. Something else – on another level: The Global North has shaped the global reference system in art, science, economy and politics. Thus, the socio-cultural narratives have initiated and are permanently renewing the existential planetary metamorphoses. The exclusion of societies from the Global South have played a fundamental role in this. A new concept of dialogue is urgently needed.

When I wander through the virtual exhibition, Ester, Christian, Thais, Theophilus, Shoni, Constant, Hugo, Isidora, Liz appear through their works, telling me these six narratives about the anthropocene without using this term.

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