THE NEW LIQUIDITY

Underwater
Cosmologies

Underwater Cosmologies is an ongoing umbrella project created directly in response to the climate crisis, in which we use participatory soundwalks, audio guides and installations, to provoke critical discourse and imaginative possibilities around the future of freshwater and marine ecosystems. By investigating different bodies of water and treating them as deep archives, we want to examine water’s fluid heritage as a place of geo-cultural and human-non-human memory. The project intertwines research from several fields of study: sound and media art, art in public space, the field of locative media and technology, the field of sensory studies and emotional geographies and finally, the field of environmental and sustainability studies.

In ”Water And Dreams” Gaston Bachelard writes that ”water truly is the transitory element. It is the essential, ontological metamorphosis between fire and earth. A being dedicated to water is a being in flux.” Alas, water is the connecting element, the most transitional element as it can exist in solid, fluid and gaseous form. In a time of climate and ecological emergency we keep this project open in terms of practice in order to better be able to react and resonate with the site in question to foster a critical discourse and imaginative possibilities around the current status and future of the marine ecosystems at a perilous moment in time. We want to examine water’s fluid ontology and the forms of life it enables, specifically, position water as shared human-non-human heritage and a site of geo-cultural memory, while recognizing that water always comes to us mediated. With this, we adopt the critical apparatus of media theory to think about geology, heritage, history and memory in terms of dynamic processes rather than solid objects. Furthermore, we would like to move beyond the perception of water in its oceanic arrangements only in terms of “fluidity” and to see it also as “a social space”, encapsulating a complex power relations. We would like to address hydromedia as a conceptual tool that will allow us to view cultural practices constitutively entangled with their environments, outlining more fluid post-Anthropocene ethics.

Our research focuses on the awareness of marine worldviews and a deeper understanding of the changes in marine ecosystems management as well as water politics in general. By focusing on story-telling as a method to trace the archives of underwater memory and its corporality we want to ask how we can engage with liquid violence, hydropoetics of displacement, and inland water's forensics. What can we learn about our corporeality from the underwater cosmologies and how can we formulate new ways of fluidity?

Underwater Cosmologies: (more info)

Tides in

the Body

Site-specific Slowfloat
Audio Experience

Exhibited at:
• Balatorium Ecology Week / Veszprém European Capital of Culture 2023, Lake Balaton, Örvenyes Beach/Örvenyes, Hungary
• Exhibition ”Disturbed Waters”, House of Arts, Veszprém, Hungary

# 2-Channel Binaural Audio Stream for Synchronized Mobile Phones w. Headphones, 19.00min

In an attempt towards decolonizing time and reconnecting to our embodied selves, The New Liquidity is proposing a slow float - a guided meditation for reimagining our corporealities. It is focused on the liminal ecotone of Lake Balaton as a body of water, but also a place of transition and transformation.

Tides in the Body was commissioned as a part of Balatorium SLOWWALK series in the framework of the BALATORIUM programme of the Veszprém- Balaton 2023 European Capital of Culture (VEB2023 ECOC). Defined as a slow walk through the landscape, aims to provide an opportunity for direct, shared and experiential encounter with the landscape and its ecological aspects through artistic means, an alternative approach to the way we live and make decisions about the environmental, economic and social aspects of the Lake Balaton region. It aims to sharpen our awareness and perception, encouraging us to look at the ecosystems of Lake Balaton with a new kind of attention - to explore not only how humans shape the landscape, but also how the landscape can affect humans.