I don’t know if the water knows how it will make its way to the sea.
The installation I don’t know if the water knows how it will make its way to the sea requests participation. The viewer is invited to walk the length of the theatre, cross the stage and enter the dwelling space; transitioning from the daylight university foyer to the darkened space of make believe and imagination. Reimagining is an active step of trust; to participate one must agree to suspend disbelief, that is to suspend anthropocentric time-space and enter into a heterotopia housed within mundane space. The intention is not to transport the viewer to another world but to invited them to hold open a space for thinking differently within the existing world.
Please take a quiet moment of reflection in which to contemplate the stories we tell about our changing relationships with the entities with whom we cohabit. It is a place for contemplating, resting, or for thinking together in conversation.
It is a space for contemplation and listening to stories and if you wish, gifting own stories to the group. In the tent are head-phones and a mobile with an audio app. I have put my grounding stories on this device for you to listen if you choose. I you have a story that you would like to share you can record it and it will be included in the menu of stories for all to listen to.
I don’t know if the water knows how it will make its way to the sea. Dwelling space with dual projections of water as it passes through my home and community in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. Jill Sorensen 2019.
Stories:
Milk Bottle. Jill Sorensen. Milk Bottle. Unpublished story, written for performance. 2018. I performed this story as part of my presentation at the conference.
My Grounding Stories: these stories have grounded and informed my research, a small exerpt of each was provided for listening while in the dwelling space. I have included the exerpts in text form as well as a link to the publisher or source.
Staying with the Trouble. Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Experimental Futures Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, Anthropological Voices. Durham London: Duke University Press, 2016. Excerpt from chapter 6, Sowing Worlds; A Seed Bag for Terraforming with Earth Others. Audio edition Haraway
Haraway, Donna J.. Staying with the Trouble (Experimental Futures) (pp. 118-119). Duke University Press. Kindle Edition.
The Botany of Desire. Michael Pollan. The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World. Random House, 2002. Excerpt from Introduction of Audible edition. Pollan
The Big Toe. Bataille, Georges. The Big Toe, from Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939. Georges Bataille
JILL SORENSEN 