That Which Is Not You
but of Which You are a Part

Download full description of River Biographies

River Biographies is an odyssey into the geology of the body as well as of the land, emphasizing that which is not human but of which you are a part. Taking the form of an hour-long session where an audience of 30 people explore embodiments of natural elements of stone and water to form a river collectively, the artwork exists somewhere between performance and a space for healing and repair. Like the life of a river is a measure of the health of a local ecosystem, River Biographies are living artworks where the shifting collective ability of the group passes through the artworks score. Each half of the group embodies the qualities of water and stone, respectively, to physically explore their relationship; the way in which stone affects the flow of the water and how water forms the topography of rock and stone, directing the water’s flow, and how both affect each other’s temporalities.

River biographies are, at its core, striving for a kinship with the world through the collective embodiment of natural forces. A river created by 30 individuals in a group can never be directional, nor can it be linear or unified, like the nature of time according to Einstein’s theory of relativity; filled with polyphonic streams all running at different speeds, bending themselves around bodies of mass, perhaps akin to some native tribes’, nonlinear and multidimensional relationship to time. For example the Aboriginal concept of time differs from the Judeo-Christian perception of time in that Aboriginal people do not perceive time as an exclusively ‘linear’ category (i.e. past−present−future) and often place events in a ‘circular’ pattern of time according to which an individual is in the center of ‘time-circles’ and events are placed in time according to their relative importance for the individual and his or her respective community.

The deep past of the materials of stone and water is traced back to the comets contaminating the ground and the first generation of dying stars, via the participant’s body. For example, the calcium from Supernova explosions form the limestone in reefs, and is present within our bones and teeth; “your teeth are reefs, your bones are stones”.