Water did not originate on planet Earth. It came from the universe in the form of ice asteroids. That same amount of water (345M mi^3) has been cycling for four billion years. I can speculate that my tap water on 144 Hopper Street may include parts of outer space, The Great Deluge, the Heraclitus River, the last glass of water drunk by Socrates, of Jesus’ baptism, of Napoleon’s urine, and of James Watt’s steam engine. Maybe I am showering with the same water that Tarkovsky filmed in Stalker, and my water has some heavy water from the nazi atom bomb experiments.
My body contains fifteen gallons of water. I call this personal water. Five gallons of my personal water are from Kastoria Lake in North Greece, the same lake where Zeus saw the young woman Leda and seduced her in the guise of a swan. Another five gallons of water are from the coast of the Sea of Marmara, where Gorgona, the mermaid, falls in love with Alexander the Great. Two gallons of my body water came into my brain directly from the mausoleum of Lenin in Moscow, together with some Socialist Realism residue. The last three gallons are from the Hudson River near the GE plant in Hudson Falls. My body is fed with water that is at least a few thousand years old.
Through sculpture, film, installation, and performance, I reflect on the contamination of water captured in me as a human. I ask questions about the social and political dealings around water. My work is reminiscent of a floating puzzle or a water network, with multiple leaks and connections to my experience. Inside the works, I position a set of hidden clues to be deciphered, encouraging viewers to make associations and to discover the truth about the water they drink. I believe that humankind’s understanding of our relationship to water is deeply wrong, sometimes through ignorance and, more frequently, through avarice and power. Those who sell, trade, deal with water should remember that water can not be owned. It is just flowing through us to the next generations and to the earth.
