Hydra: Watery Worldings

2018

Book launch and exhibition with the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology

Astrida Neimanis /Jean Painlevé / Madison Bycroft / Tobias Lukassen & Ingjerd Heggem Nergaard

“I am a singular, dynamic whorl
dissolving in a complex, fluid circulation.”
- Astrida Neimanis

On World Water Day we invited aboard a journey into watery worldings with the launch of Astrida Neimanis: "Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water" in Danish translation.

Earthlings are challenged by floods, hurricanes and droughts; seawater is heating and acidified; and toxins, heavy metals and plastic flow freely in our common planetary waters.

In "Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water" Astrida Neimanis explores how we are intimately connected with water; our bodies consist mainly of this aqueous substance, that we ingest in order to survive. But through water we also connect with all the other bodies, through which that water has traveled. In this fluid circulation we absorb and leave traces, that are often invisible to the ones who take a sip.

Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology looks to watery ecologies and asks: How does feminism flow beyond its boundaries through watery perspectives? What new "hydrologics" unfold in aqueous worlds? How does water make worlds?

Accompanying the launch, we showed a selection of works that bring us closer to watery worlds: from explorations of the strange mollusks on the bottom of the sea to experiments with a new mutually implicated ontology.

The event is part of the project Hydra, that explores watery worldings, transcorporeal trauma and oceanic healing.

The event took place on the floating artist studio collective, Illutron.

Generously supported by Kulturhavn365.