Water Carrier
WATER CARRIER, landscape to use.
Artist : Elise Morin
Curator : Zuzana Pacakova
Oct – Dec 2012 Košice 2013 - European Capital of Culture
Hornád waterway - Košice - Slovakia.
Seven blocks consisting of 5000 test tubes line the artificial river Mlýnský Nahon app. 20m wide in Kosice (Slovakia). On October 6, the "Biela Noc" (white night) of Kosice, the river was emptied. Test tubes hanging from wooden rings’ blocks were filled and diluted with fluorescein. Within hours, the river bed was refilled with water diverted from the Hornad river to give the illusion of floating blocks on the surface. Fluorescein is a chemical used to draw underground water courses, resurgences, leaks, test the wastewater networks, find the path of unfamiliar networks, identify inversions between networks of wastewater and rains. Stagnant, here it is used cast against type favoring a pragmatic relationship, largely utilitarian and physical, domestic water, controlled and dominated. Its green fluorescent colour will gradually disappear as a result of natural interventions, light and rain.
By this decorative vision, the project proposes a reflection on the death of "the idea of nature." Water flowing where it is told to go, which is manipulated but does not eliminate the magical dimensions of the amazing transformations which result by weather time changes. Water has become a strategic and rare product in the world, has lost its friendly image, to power inequalities and conflicting relationship. "WATER CARRIER" is set in an approach between use and imagination. Avatar of the "Water Carrier" recurring figure in art it implicitly makes reference to, offers a changing urban landscape and revitalizing site. We can estimate these aesthetics have the collective ability to enjoy a place as an experience , but we also know the social and historical reasons it expresses.
