BREATHING WATER 

”Water is a connector, a differentiator, a facilitator, a communicator. It brings all kinds of bodies into intimate contact, despite and because ofour differences” Astrida Nemanis  

BREATHING WATER springs from the intuitive art project I STILL LIVE IN WATER, initially starting with a collaboration in the exhibition Amniotic Fluid/I Still Live in Water, 2018, at Tomelilla Art Hall that wanted to have a sound piece for their audio logs, making the exhibition available for blind and visually impaired. The result became the sound piece WATER DIALOGUES by Felicia Konrad, David Carlsson, Mats Persson, and Tina Quartey. Water Dialogues was also exhibited outdoors, at Malmö Art Museum in the summer of 2020, as an extension of the exhibition Shape Shifters. Malmö Art Museum also gave us the assignment to create a live performance concert, it became; Body of Water/Kropp av Vatten

which we performed outdoors at Malmö Art Museum on the 16th of August, 2020.

Water Dialogues were also exhibited at Gibca Extended 2021, at Tjörns Municipality together with the award-winning film Precious Balance Walk, by I Still Live in Water, and at Ljudkullen, Malmö Sommarscen 2021.
Our second version of Body of Water Live Performance Concert was at the #malmogallerihelg2022 #konstframjandetiskane; an extended version in St Pauli Church, Malmö, a wonderful experience with the enormous space in the church! And the third time was at Malmöfestivalen 2023 a 3 h durational version at St Petri Kyrka, a completely awesome experience.  

“There are tides in the body. We ebb and flow across time and space – body, to body, to body, to body.” Virginia Woolf

About Water Dialogues

Water Dialogues is an intuitive and spontaneous sound piece that ranges from exploration of more than the human world, the mystic and mind-blowing in that water is alive, and the everyday Nordic welfare life where the clean running tap water is something that we take for granted with the sense that we have endless water resources.  

Tomelilla Arthall, Sweden.
"During the exhibition period, many of our visitors took part of Water Dialogues. It was installed in an almost dark room in the lower part of the art hall. In the room, there were sitting possibilities, and the sound piece was experienced by help from audioguides and headphones. The sound piece seemed to stimulate stillness and reflection. Often when we in the staff were crossing the room, we met visitors sitting and half laying in sacosacs, apparently encapsulated in the sound piece. And in themselves. The sound piece appealed to both children and adults, and these moments of stillness and soulful presence as the piece offered gave the visitors a very strong experience.
- We found that the sound piece was very appreciated and that it gave a deepening understanding, not only in the understanding of our relationship to water, but also, and maybe the most important, our relation to ourselves, to our origin and our future.

-Tomelilla Art Hall found that the sound piece was very appreciated and that it gave a deepening understanding, not only in the understanding of our relationship to water but also, and maybe the most important, our relation to ourselves, our origin, and our future.”

Desirée Lennklo, curator at Tomelilla Arthall. 

During the work with our second sound piece Breathing Water, we also choose to become a band with the same name as the sound piece.

With Breathing Water our aim was to continue our work with our first sound piece Water Dialogues and create a playful sound piece that spoke directly to the senses of being water and becoming with water.  With focus on that 2 out of 3 breaths is oxygen coming from the plants in the Ocean, and that our bodies are composed by water; our lungs 83 % of water, and we breathe out 0,5 -1 liter of water a day.

Breathing Water consists by our field recordings with hydrophone under the water surface, and above the surface in the 
the waters of The Sound(Öresund), Malmö, Sweden, and improvisation and instant composition in the Yellow Studio, Malmö.

"Becoming with involves a metaphysics that is grounded in connection, challenging delusions of separation, Donna Haraway tells us that “If we appreciate the foolishness of human exceptionalism then we know that becoming is always becoming with, in a contact zone where the outcome, where who is in the world, is at stake.”

About the process 

Unexpected things happened, during our recordings underwater we experienced for us an unknown state of sensing/listening, since the sound travels fast underwater 1500 m/s in saltwater, 4 times faster than in air. When we listened to the sound that flowed through our ears but also directly through our bodies consisting of so much water, the line between the sea, our bodies, and the sounds became blurry and a kind of confusion and disorientation appeared. – And it also became obvious that The Sound is full of sound pollution. – We became shocked over how intense and how strong the sounds from especially the ships and ferrys sounded.

We needed to process this and found out that there is 1 investigation made in 2014 that draws the conclusion that Porpoises, Seals, and Cods become stressed by the Ship traffic sounds in the Baltic Sea. It is known facts today that especially Mammal’s navigation and communication are affected by sonar, and bomb blasting of course.

Our field recording; 1 ship comes loaded 1 of 40 000 yearly in The Sound (underwater pollution) that is published in this piece, is a field recording made in Summer 2021, It is a plain recording, that is mastered without any effects, it is recorded with Aquarian H2a, Sound device premix 6.

Last; our reference during our work is the  marvelous sound artist Jana Winderen:

Composition from the Soundscape of the Anthropocene Ocean

https://janawinderen.bandcamp.com/album/listening-through-the-dead-zones-excerpt

Thank you Malmö Stad for the Development support for Breathing Water!