The Logic of Water (2022)
The Logic of Water was commissioned by the 23rd Biennale of Sydney to serve as a place-responsive activation. The text, to be followed as a walk, connects the 23rd Biennale of Sydney locations from National Art School, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay Arts Precinct and The Cutaway at Barangaroo.
The Logic of Water
Guide for writing a poem with 12 images
- First image
Motivation:
Look at the modern landscape of steel and concrete before you. Try to remember this place clearly, paying attention to every corner, every color, every texture. Then proceed to immediately forget it. Try to see this image anew, as if you did not know where you are.
Writing instruction:
Write the first line of the poem as describing this place as the background of the happiest moment of your life. Then write the second line that describing this place as the background of the saddest moment of your life.
- Second image
Motivation:
Think about the shades made by trees as maternal protection in the womb.
Writing instruction:
Describe, in one line, the story of this small pool of water as all the oceans of the world and you are there to take care and become the protector of this last existing remainder.
- Third image
Motivation: Think of yourself as a potted plant or a tree planted on the sidewalk.
Writing instruction: describe the sensations that you desire to have.
- Fourth image
Motivation: Imagine a memorial as if it were a living human being.
Writing instruction: Write a line about a sensation felt while amidst visiting a world populated only by memorials.
- Fifth image
Motivation: Listen to the sounds around you. Imagine these sounds as if they were produced in an uninhabited world.
Writing instruction: Imagine a sound that can only be perceived by trees and describe three qualities of that sound.
- Sixth image
Motivation: Listen to the sounds of the nearby body of water.
Writing instruction: Describe your life’s relationship with water with three adjectives and three colors.
- Seventh image
Motivation:
Think about the strongest feelings you have ever felt in relationship to water.
Writing instruction: In one next line, describe how water has freed you, and when water has made you feel lost or entrapped.
- Eighth image
Motivation: Think of a valuable and loved item you once had, and then lost forever.
Writing Instruction: Imagine, then write the name and three atributes of a mythical character– someone who goes to the bottom of the ocean forever to retrieve something they have lost, only to lose it again once they emerge to the surface (the hypothetical brother of Sysyphus).
- Ninth image
Motivation: Imagine how the natural and the artificial worlds would look like if they could be personified.
Writing instruction: write a question posed by the natural world and the answer posed by the artificial world as if they were in dialogue.
- Tenth image
Motivation: think of ancient cultures and consider what they knew about nature that we ignore.
Writing instruction: In one line, write the epitaph of this landscape.
- Eleventh image
Motivation: Think about what brings all living beings together.
Writing instruction: Imagine a phrase at the entrance of this house if all of humankind had been born inside this very building.
- Twelfth image
Motivation: Take an object that you are carrying with you and detach yourself from it, bidding it farewell.
Writing instruction: write the last line of an ancient prayer, real or imagined.
Tags: Scores, Sydney Biennale, walks