Some Nothings

Change Everything After Them

Note: the title for this project is quoted from Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Grogeous

These are the stories of daily life, routines, defined by the examination of the duplexity of water. Water is. Life and loss. Deliverer and destroyer. Pleasure and plague. Fantasy and fright.

I think about the behavior of water. The process of infiltration– to retain, holding for future use. We witness someone desperate for water to drink. “Slurp”. The process of transpiration– to release, moving through the pores. We watch someone hopelessly awaiting relief from the heat. “Seep”. The process of condensation– to replenish, transitioning states of being. We interrupt someone washing away the day. “Submerge”. Where does the water come from and where does it go? We approach someone contemplating the water pouring out of the kitchen sink. “Soak”. Each of the following artworks addresses the macro through the micro; a personal site of tension that is reflective of a larger issue: access to water. For consuming, cleaning, cooking, commoding, etc. 

When discussing art that confronts, holds a mirror to, standards around female-identifying bodies, I have been told “this has been done,” and, “I’ve seen this already,” and, “I remember when we were doing this in the 70s.” Yet.. we are still inundated with these concerns. We are exhausted. Woefully, this is a serious and perpetual bone of contention. Cue: Martha Wainwright’s “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole”. 

Each image brings back this question: what is really happening here?! The works call out our own expectations, our own complicity in comfort over confrontation.

She is driven out of her home in search of clean drinking water. She comes across a murky puddle, and has no other alternatives. She drinks. Are you focused on her body positioning, her ambiguous gesture? The external poisoning. 

She wants to be a person in her own space. To not be seen as something wanted, as not belonging to herself. Her inner monologue is one of turmoil and learned self-blame, though it feels like the Truth. “Well.. You kind of stink. But it’s ok. Can I wash you? It’ll be nice. Intimate.” Things he said she will never forget. “Do you even like vaginas?” Things she wished she had said back. The internal toxicity.

She bathes at the intersection of privacy, trauma, and expectations of purity. You locate a woman, a nude female body. One, like most, that has been objectified by society (Me Too). One that has been violated in this sacred space.

That seemed the heart of it: that both men and women prioritize the comfort and well-being of men over women’s safety, comfort, even the truth of their bodily experience…The more we want to exploit a body, the less humanity we allow it. (Girlhood, Melissa Febos)

The overruling of Roe v. Wade encroached on the anniversary of her own abortion. She feels grateful to have been able to administer it by herself, in charge of her own body, in her own home. Sitting in an empty bathtub, the same position for masturbation, for managing menstruation. Reaching into the depths of herself, she entered the same realm of life and loss, deliverer and destroyer, pleasure and plague, fantasy and fright. The beginning and the ending. Here.

In these charged spaces… We infiltrate and retain water to sustain our momentum; We transpire and release water to regulate our bodies; We condensate and replenish water to shift our signifiers. Wash away the day, the literal dirt, the emotional weight. Reclaiming these private places where we reconnect mind and body, ourselves. Cleansing, relaxing, rejuvenating… finding solitude, and, in doing so, building community.

The kitchen sink. Somewhere you cook, make coffee, wash dishes… Nowadays, it feels normal to be skeptical of whether or not the water coming out of the tap is safe (Note: Flint and Jackson). Have you experienced any adversity related to water? At this rate, it is inevitably in our very near future, albeit disproportionately across racial and class lines. What happens when we’ve depleted water’s facility for rehabilitation? When we’ve annihilated water.

It is largely through water that most people will ‘experience’ climate change for the first time: through unpredictable rainfall, droughts and floods, and the disruption this will bring to our food systems, drinking water supplies and our connectivity. (International Water Management Institute)

Historically and currently, societal hierarchies have been established to situate blame and burden on intentionally marginalized groups of people. Climate change has exacerbated pre-existing imbalances and crises rooted in racism, classism, and sexism. How we designate land and water as valuable is determined by whether or not its tenants “deserve” respect and protection. As reporter Sarah Kendzior succinctly states: “Water is a legal right ignored in places where the law is selectively enforced.” This highlights why it’s so difficult to address and change negative impacts of climate change and water misuse and mismanagement. 

We need to free ourselves from chauvinism and our escapism to play with what is liberating in our heritages (as well as appraising their problems), letting go of both the urge to inflate our identity as the one true way or to repudiate it as total toxic waste. … We need to deal modestly and truthfully but also transformatively with who we are, culturally and economically. [Begin building relationships] no longer as oppressors trying to suppress other peoples’ identities but also not as “white blanks” seeking to fill our own emptiness at the expense of others. (Women Healing Earth, Rosemary Radford Ruether)

My prints, films, and drawings reveal repetitive cycles. We are co-creators and caretakers. This is a constant and continual process of weaving together everyone’s knowledge.

In the waves and the rivers and the lakes and the ponds we see what was, what is, and what is beyond us. Now we must figure out ways to make sure we are also seeing what will be. Preserving, protecting, and restoring our waters are tasks for many lifetimes, and sometimes the effort can seem overwhelming. But as long as we stay connected with all of the many, many blessings that water provides, and continue to keep that love in the forefront of our minds and hearts, as long as we remind ourselves to hope, then our stories will help connect others to water and encourage them to do what they can to help care for this beautiful Blue Marble world. (Blue Mind, Wallace J. Nichols)

A process that utilizes how water can support us, not as a resource, but as an entity with its own agency.

These films were developed by Molar Movement Projects, an artistic collective led by Sonja Petermann and Kathleen Dalton, which grapples with the incessant abuse of water and women.

Filming and editing by Sonja Petermann

Choreography by Kathleen Dalton, in collaboration with performers

Performers: 

“Seep” - Sonja Petermann 

“Submerge” - Kathleen Dalton

“The Sea” - erika harano

Special thank you to Kathleen Dalton, erika harano, Aja Depass, Alejandra Castelero, Peter Reveles, and Danielle Muzina for creative feedback and willingness to share oneself.