OVERVIEW

In six sessions over the course of three days, the WoW VideoShow gathers short videos by over 15 artists from 11 countries working on, in, and with the water. Water and waterways feature both as a place where the work happens and an essential part of the work—friend, deity, home, and collaborator. Working with water, the artists are immersed in the issues at the base of human life—human and non-human relationships to “nature” and culture; economics, history, nation, and infrastructure; race, class, and access; ritual, desire, and the sensory world.

CURATORIAL STATEMENT

We set out to discover the shared ways artists are thinking about and experiencing water around the world. We discovered a series of models and approaches to water and waterways, that through art, and the intersection with other forms that think through being with and for our waterways. Artists Felipe Castelblanco, Tsubasa Kato, Jane Chang Mi, and Subho O Saha create a direct relationship with the water through their own bodies, performing a singular action in or on the waterway partners. Natalie Casagran Lopez, Basia Irland, Sto Len, and Mary Ellen Strom explore water through performance--music-making, storytelling, and ritual come to the water to reveal new perspectives. Neha Choksi, Jon Cohrs, and Alex Monteith, Natalie Robertson and Graeme Atkins relate directly to water as a permeable material that takes many forms, infiltrating all aspects of our existence. James Dawson, Miguel Arzabe, and Jeannette Ehlers use abstraction to animate water histories, economics, and spatial politics. Marie Lorenz, Geneveieve Robertson and Meredith Lackey explore the infrastructures that contain (or don’t contain) water. The histories that grow up around water inform the works of Jacob Rivkin, Ayesha Hadir, and Lydia Hicks. We are excited to share their works with you: join us to watch, think, and feel water, together, online.
– Clarinda Mac Low & Nancy Nowacek