CROSSING BOUNDARIES BETWEEN SCIENCE, ARTS AND SOCIETAL ISSUES, VIEWS ON THE SANTIAGO RIVER, MEXICO
OPHELIA & SANTIAGO is a collaborative art, science and social research project based on the many dimensions of water. (Work in process)
The project that aims to provide space for conversations and an exchange of knowledges between different fields, interests, perspectives, scales and apparatus, crossing together epistemic meanings to gather articulations with an artistic propositional procedure.
Tracing topologies and connections that hold stories and conceptual analogies that carry visible and hidden aspects, liquid histories; taking the form of a video and mixed media installations informed by intra-acting interpretations.
We were inspired by Sha Xin Wei’s article (Nov. 2011) called Topology and Morphogenesis, in this article he observes the concept of Topology and articulates “substance” and infinity using notions of proximity, convergence, limit, change and novelty, without recourse to number or metric. Xin Wei explains how “topological concepts can provide adequate grip so we can apply theorems as an artful propositional procedure, … “abstractions that act as ‘lures’, luring attention toward ‘something that matters’.
The point of departure of the actual trans-disciplinary project begins in the highly industrialized periphery of Guadalajara (Pop: 5M), where the toxic waters of Rio Santiago pass before it heads 200 kilometers to the sea, 1500 meters below. Called Mexico’s most contaminated river.[
The idea is to look into these water's anthropogenic, natural and cultural evolutions, and trace links, ask questions, hold stories or conceptual analogies to weave together poetic/political/scientific potentials that intra-act[with these contaminated waters and its people. Using art and local research, to document and imagine new topologies,[that follow values of rhizomatic research, allowing for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points through the process of experimentation with different mediums (plants, mushrooms local materials), documentation and re-interpretation of collected data, become part of the Civic response - Combining our efforts with the group Recuperación de los Ríos and Un Salto de Vida in el Salto, that seeks to do citizen science, share the information and give attention to the accelerating problem of contamination and health issues in our surroundings. Citizens of these communities search for strategies to improve the water quality, and raise our level of understanding and response.
The expression holds testimonies and common reflexions, bringing new narratives and a contextual engagement (through monitoring methods) to highlight the conditions of the sublime and the monstrous in these ¨modern¨ landscapes/waterscapes, containing (chemical, biological), social and political manifestations of an anthropogenic/capitaligenic imprint and reflects on notions of adaptation, resilience and (social) empowerment, denomination of capital; structures of understanding the social and the environmental within local and planetary presented within audio-visual framework.
Our artistic proposition is taking the form of a series of short films, video installations to materialize a conceptual aspect of the project in a non-narrative or non-linear way - molecules connected to people’s lives, as well as water cultures. These videos and installations will be re-interpreted in diverse dimensions and shapes for its exhibition in different contexts (such as Space Kugler (Feb. 2021) Geneva Switzerland, the inauguration of the Sciencescope (March 2020) as well as art spaces on site in Mexico and different partner’s countries).
Financed by the Smitheiny Foundation, the Chimiscope and Horizontes Jalisco.
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