DRINKING WATER

For water to become a commodity, it must be encapsulated. Lines must be drawn around it to say this water is owned by this person. There are of course many ways enterprising humans counter this material slipperiness, making containers of plastic, of concrete, of geopolitical boundary…and yet, the constant need for this containment suggests that water, from a material perspective, inherently resists ownership. Water moves; it flows and leaks away; it evaporates, drifts through the air; it condenses elsewhere. Drinking Water explores this resistance and makes it visible not only as a material property but also as political and social possibility.

Drinking Water is a participatory performance work which brings collaborating participants into a temporary sharing economy around water. Through the collection of water from various local sites the project examines the movements of water relative to human life, at the scale of the body, the scales of local inter-human and human-place relationships, and at the scale of the planet. This gathering of water makes visible the inherent properties of water that resist its commodification and introduces new movement patterns, behaviours and rituals that reinforce these resistances. A culminating participatory performance of water sharing and drinking is organized as a temporary gifting economy, where the labour and care around its collection become the currency of the shared water.

The hope of this work is to spark future imaginaries around the consumption of water that challenge notions of deprivations as the only alternative to contemporary consumption patterns suggesting instead that careful concern around the consumption of water may bring with it positive changes to collective life such as mechanisms of mutual aid, solidarity and collective agency.