Flows – Bodies of Water – A Reader

Flows is an ensemble of texts about the relationships water creates, reveals, and erodes, and about the animal, vegetal, mineral, mechanical, digital, geological, and cosmic bodies that are formed and traversed by it. The texts gathered here portray the manners through which water shapes the earth and the world, and investigates their historical, philosophical, material, and affective significance.
From bodies to other bodies, climates, ecosystems and technologies, all life forms are inextricably interconnected and interdependent. The exhibition Bodies of Water asks us to examine this living collectivity at a time when the earth is facing unprecedented challenges, from the accelerating climate crisis to the current global pandemic. The participating artists and collectives present artworks that explore caring-based approaches which negotiate our entanglement in extended ecosystems of interdependency. A significant number of these works have been specifically commissioned and conceived for the space and times of the Biennale.
If the exhibition is made of the synergies between artworks, the book is made of the synergies between the ideas of the artworks. It builds conceptual and interpretative relationships that reverberate, dialogue and expand the exhibition: the book reverberates the exhibition by presenting its themes in a different format. It dialogues with the exhibition by bringing together texts that respond and engage with its theme in original and meaningful manners, which promote other forms of understanding the whole project. The book expands the exhibition's themes in a depth and directions that are not possible to achieve in the physical venues. The book takes the exhibition further afar and reveals the originality of the research made to conceive the show and the density of its ramifications of ideas and knowledge.