Learning water, salty eyes (BA, HotDock Project space, 02.02. 2020)
Collaboration with artist Katarína Poliačiková
reading performance and video
“Water passes through this house in a rational network of metal pipes, as someone had determined. In this house, people are dreaming of sea or dreaming of drowning. In this house, they watch glaciers melting in the evening news, they look at those who are, somewhere far away, thirsty, while they return home with heavy cartons of bottled water.
In this house people sweat in bad dreams while water dries up at the bottom of their glasses in darkness, leaving behind a sequence of fine lines like Amenemhet’s water clock. The water that leaves us remembers our bodies. The water runs through them like it does through caves, soaking in stories of our interiors.
In this house, people are longing for the sea, even though they no longer know why. Naive, we think that our bodies don’t feel something we don’t know about. In the dark, when we only see a thin strip of light underneath the bathroom door, immersed in warm water, we close our eyes and feel safe, entering the strangely familiar. In darkness and in water we are innocent as we once were, and now, through water, we try to return to what we always have been.”
This project was supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.
text by: Katarína Poliačiková
photos: Leontína Berková
poster: Aurélia Garová