BINATIONAL ARTISTIC PhD-PROGRAM

What is the biological role of water in sustaining life? On what scale of multiples does this water-life relation take place? How is an ocean, a massive body of water, impacted by laws and artificial borders imposed by humankind? And how are these water-life relations also absorbed on the micropolitical level of our own bodies? 

The Anthropocene, marked by the prolonged and indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources under a capitalist mindset, have led to a detrimental condition of water ecosystems. For communities all around the world, water has taken on a central role in the struggle to combat the effects of climate change and to constitute emancipated forms of governance outside of traditional capitalist structures. (Cusicanqui, 2018)

This artistic research will develop a mapping of the various agents entangled in the colonial and postcolonial structures that allow and facilitate the contamination of water resources, thus giving a more in-depth perspective on how this connects with maladies manifested in the bodies of those who struggle. It is also crucial to bear in mind the globalized market system’s high degree of complexity and interconnectivity (Bourdieu, 1993), with particular consideration of the political history of concessions made to the exploration and exploitation of mines, farmland, et cetera, in Latin America. This history is closely tied to the neocolonial expansion of private companies that seek to secure raw materials and production resources in areas that fall outside the protection of more strict environmental legal frameworks, such as European Union regulations.

This research will take material form in a series of audio-visual installations that are activated by interventions with the body. This will include my own body as a performer, but also the bodies of communities in struggle, the bodies of artists whom I would be interested in inviting to collaborate, as well as the bodies of those engaging with the artistic research. I propose to research and develop an artistic cartographic practice, which, through performance, text, and video, finds meaningful ways of providing a space for bodies to heal and to collectively understand the intricate ways that capitalism and colonialism have led to the exploitation of water in the reservoirs, lakes, oceans, and our bodies.

Supervised by Professor Dr. Andrea Sick