liquid memories
~to read with water
EDITORIAL TEXT
In 2021, London -based studio and publishing platform msdm – mobile strategies of display & mediation – incubated and hosted a two-part residency at the invitation of Francisco Varela, to participate in his curatorial project, designed to explore the contact zone between water, photography and publishing. Conceived as process-based, this publication started with the “situated waters,” of the Douro River and Pasteleira reservoir park, in the city of Porto, Portugal.
The first bloc of works titled ‘WATER STATIONS’ was developed in workshop with a group of Porto-based artists and photographers. Water samples collected from a local water treatment plant, were used to soak the photographic collections, and unleash water’s own archival materialities. Inspired by the research of water visionaries, we explored the memory of water, life’s archiving medium, to appropriate and collage historical archives. Records held by two companies that capture water from the river and distribute it to the city, include studies of the impact of urban settlements on water’s sanitation.
The second bloc of works titled ‘WATER STORIES’ was activated through a mass zoom live editing lab and open call for further collaborations. This was an online workshop cum networked performance, staging the ‘water stations’ (capture, organic, suspended, mud, deep mud, rough) in six breakout rooms.The addition of a 7th station for participatory tools, offered a meta-room to map participation.
In both blocs – ‘WATER STATIONS’ and ‘WATER STORIES’ – historical subjects appear as meteora, atmospheric phenomena like windy rain, clouds, misty vapour, and as watery places like rivers, lakes, streams, oceans, water stations, wet environments, inseparable from various human and non-human actors. They are chaotic, fragmented, messy, unruly, flow, fall, dissolve in multiple layers, with slippages, deep wells, knots, holes, underground tunnels, flooding, and contamination.
Moving through time like water waves, one memory reads through another, as they meet and overlap in their entangled entanglements. Seen, for example, in wave patterns of light and dark lines of light waves moving across the flatbed scanner encountering the obstacle of historical photographs being dragged across the glass; or in the swirling spherical marks created by contact print on floating ink, a result of water waves created through surface tension. We draw insights from new materialism feminist models of wet historical time, challenging the repression of wetness from western philosophy. In this conception, fluid liquids offer a model for time, space, and matter in relational flux. We follow this relational ontology and approach water as process of becoming, dissolution of human and non-human, bodies and water, an ecologically oriented posthuman feminism for the Anthropocene.
figuring liquid memories::::::::::::::: mobile aesthetics of wateryquery
by paula roush [read full editorial text here]
COLOPHON
liquid memories
to read with water
ISBN
978-0-9553793-5-2
Co-authors:
Maria João Ferreira,
paula roush,
Betina Dal Molin Juglair,
Francisco Varela,
Miguel Marecos,
Joana Nascimento,
David Goldenberg,
Raul Simões Pinto,
NDMALO archive,
Alice WR,
Teresa Huertas,
Carla Fragata,
Manuela Matos Monteiro,
Luís Carvalhal,
Natércia Caneira,
João de Goes,
Inês R. Amado,
Eduardo Sousa Ribeiro,
Ana Botelho,
Manuela Vaz,
Renato Roque,
Eliane Velozo and Severino Iaba,
Susana Paiva,
Mide Plácido
Project and
editorial design:
paula roush
Commissioning
curator:
Francisco Varela
in the context of “Memória líquida:
a methodology of project between
photography, curating and publishing,
Masters in Museological and Curatorial
Studies, Fine Arts School
University of Porto
December 2021
Production assistance:
Mireille Ribière
Studio team:
George Parnell
Hugo Santos
Swap studio
Supported by:
School of Arts and Creative Industries /
Centre for the Study of the Networked Image
at the London South Bank University
Portuguese and English
Archives:
NDMALO: Núcleo de Defesa
do Meio Ambiente de Lordelo
do Ouro (Belmiro Cunha)
Águas e Energia do Porto, EM
Águas de Douro e Paiva, S.A.
Estação de Tratamento de Água
ETA de Lever
Paróquia de Nossa Senhora da Ajuda
Bairro da Pasteleira Ano 50/90
grupo do Facebook
Arquivo Municipal do Porto
Publication license:
Creative Commons
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Edition: 100
(all constellations are unique)
Published by
msdm publications
[mobile strategies
of display & meditation]
INSTRUCTIONS
TO READ WITH WATER
CONTENTS
"WATER STATIONS"
Maria João Ferreira
CAPTURE
An 84-page perfect bound paperback, 14.8 x 10.5 cm, containing experiments with images by photographer Marques de Abreu 1909 study 'Contribution to Hygiene in Porto'. Scannography
(or scanner photography, the process of capturing digitized images of prints) in which historical photographs are altered through a deviation in the scanning procedure, a movement of folding, juxtaposing, and dragging prints of the source images across the flatbed photo scanner with a
CCD array capturing device creating waves along its path. The cover, printed in colour, showcases
the workbook, outlining the process and work environment.
1 paperback
pages: 84
size: 14.8 x 10.5 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated
black & white
perfect binding
cover: 250gsm silk paper, colour
paula roush
ORGANIC WATERS
Two pamphlets created through water contact printing.
CHAOTIC GEOMETRY OF WATER, 16 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm, has photographs sourced from Pasteleira 1950-90s Facebook group;
VORTICE PATTERNS OF WATER, 12 pages, 21 x 21 cm, contains photographs from Periódico Encontro (Meeting Newsletter) published by the Parish of Nossa Senhora da Ajuda, Pasteleira. Prints folded into tetrahedrons (three-dimensional shapes with triangular faces), when placed in direct contact with water (with seaweed, coloured ink and brushes, as in ancient suminagashi ‘ink floating’ technique) render visible continuous spiraling
of liquid motion. Around the folded edges, as additional tension coalesces, diffraction patterns create geometric, interlacing organic-like surfaces,
to connect to both sacred water geometry and quantum molecular
structure.
Two elongated pamphlets LIQUID WORDS, 29.7 x 10.5 cm, 24 and
8 pages each, assemble liquid words elicited from workshop participants, following a WATERYQUERY guided exercise.
1 pamphlet
pages: 16
size: 29.7 x 21 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated, colour,
saddle stitched
1 pamphlet
pages: 8
size: 21 x 21 cm,
paper: 90 gsm uncoated, colour,
saddle stitched
1 pamphlet
pages: 24
size: 29.7 x 10.5 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated, colour
saddle stitched.
1 pamphlet
pages: 8
size: 29.7 x 10.5 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated, colour
saddle stitched.
Betina Dal Molin Juglair
SUSPENDED WATERS
A 24-page pamphlet, 21 x 14.8 cm, printed b&w, showcases photo-text collages developed with photographs of broken umbrellas, found in streets of Porto. Traces of extreme weather events, felt by a diasporic dweller recently moved to the city, are embodied in these objects, shields meant to protect from the swirl of windy rainy days. Cut-ups from historical essays on urban waters and unsteady communities, include the 1909 study Contribution to Hygiene in Porto and the 1994 essay Time and Community: The Lost Nexus, a reflection on the Pasteleira community. A related poster, LIQUID POEMS, 29.7 x 42 cm, adds inter-textuallity to metereological feelings.
1 pamphlet
pages: 24
size: 21 x 14.8 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated, black & white
saddle stitched
1 poster
size: 29.7 x 42 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated, colour
folded
Francisco Varela
PURE MUD
Two nested pamphlets. One, WATER SAMPLES & JERRY CANS, 20 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm, contains photographs of ETA Lever Water Treatment Station,
a supplier of water to Porto, and details chemicals added to the water as it enters the various treatment processes -capture, organic, suspended, mud, deep mud, rough. Water samples, collected in 5-liter jerry cans were used to submerse the photographs during the liquid memories online workshop. The other booklet, WET PAMPHLET, 16 pages, 28 x 21 cm, was created through immersion of historical and personal photographs with water treated with ozone, aluminum sulfate, mud, and polyelectrolytes. Some prints lost their digital definition, others got darker, and some tore apart.
1 pamphlet
pages: 20
size: 29.7 x 21 cm
paper: 120gsm uncoated, colour
saddle stitched
1 pamphlet
pages: 16
size: 28 x 21 cm
paper: 120gsm uncoated, colour
saddle stitched
Miguel Marecos
DEEP MUDS
A 28 pages pamphlet LIQUID EXPERIMENTS, 29.7 x 21 cm, and poster
42x 59.4 cm, feature zoomed in cropped closeup portraits of people that appeared in the 1909 study 'Contribution to Hygiene in Porto,' posing by water fountains and inside water tunnels, re-photographed using plastic lenses and bags filled with water as diffractive filters.
Another poster DECONSTRUCTION, 42x 59.4 cm, shows photoprints from Pasteleira 1950-90s Facebook group photographs after they were wet and frozen.
EXERCISE OF FELT SENSE, a set of 5 cards, 21 x14.8 cm each, present WATERYQUERY guided exercises. Taken as a dynamic meditative practice, they guide step by step through various stages of formulating liquid memories arising from the felt sense of photographing with water.
1 pamphlet
pages: 28
size: 29.7 x 21 cm
paper: 100gsm uncoated, colour
saddle stitched
2 posters
size: 42x 59.4 cm
paper: 120gsm uncoated, colour
5 cards
size: 21 x14.8 cm
paper: 120 gsm uncoated, colour
Joana Nascimento
ROUGH WATER
A continuous pamphlet, 44 pages, 21x 14.8 cm, with 2 parts to be read in any direction. Part 1, LIQUID STONE / RAW WATER are photocollages,
made of two halves, where the notion of “turbulence” is activated at the intersection of ground level watery places (personal photographs)
and 19th century underground water tunnels (historical photographs);
Part 2, FLUID WRITING assembles handwritten notes gathered during WATERYQUERY guided exercises, stained with paper marbling water technique.
Two posters, 42 x 29.7 cm each, WITH TWO STONES IN HAND and MARBLED PATH, invite you to two performative readings with water.
1 pamphlet
pages: 44
size: 21x 14.8 cm
paper: 120 gsm uncoated
black & white
saddle stitched
2 posters
size: 42 x 29.7 cm
paper: 100 gsm uncoated
black & white
David Goldenberg
PARTICIPATORY TOOLS
A pamphlet DEVELOPING A TOPOLOGY OF POST AUTONOMY, 24 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm, in two halves, contains personal stories, photographs and selections from the book Post Autonomy (2010). Its conceptual framework
- as another model and space separate from the existing model of art -
is revisited in the context of liquid memories workshop. Diagrams show participants navigation through six breakout rooms, and can be used
to annotate readers' journeys through the printed sections.
1 pamphlet (split)
pages: 24
size: 29.7 x 21 cm
paper: 120 gsm uncoated, colour
saddle stitched
Raul Pinto Simões
PASTELEIRA CITY
A leaflet, 29.7 x21 cm, À MEMÓRIA DE LUÍS “VAREIRO”
(‘TO THE MEMORY OF LUIS VAREIRO’), extract from the book
Pasteleira City, is a testimony written in memory of Luis Vareiro, a brave resident of Pasteleira who resisted the Portuguese dictatorship. He was caught putting up political posters in the streets of Porto. It was 1958.
He managed to run away and hide inside water tunnels leading to the wells in Pasteleira park, but the state police found him and tortured him to death.
1 leaflet
page size: 29.7 x21 cm
paper: 80 gsm recycled natural, black & white
NDMALO
PASTELEIRA ECOTONE
6 loose snapshots, 10.5 x14.8 cm each, sourced from the NDMALO archive, the grass-roots activist association fighting for environmental justice in the Pasteleira area. The photographs show the park in the 1980s and 1990s and the backs have hand-written notes relating to historical spaces that have been gentrified and erased from current urban use, making it an invaluable resource in public history.
photographs
6 loose snapshots
size: 10.5 x14.8 cm
paper: 250gsm
silk finish
colour
"WATER STORIES"
Alice WR
EMOTIONAL SOLVENT
A 20 pages pamphlet, 21 x 29. cm, proposes the use of water in service of a personal rebalancing strategy. Between thinking and feeling, it involves both mental and bodily experiences, the symbolism of homeostasis, and the visit to a pond or stream in a local garden. The simple ritual consists in releasing the image of a worry to the water stream and watch it flow to create a distanced representation of the issue at hand. Throw into the water an image that represents your worry, follow its course, photograph it, rescue what is left at the end, and that gives another point of view. Two loose photographs, one black& white, 10.5 x 14.8 cm, the other an acetate print 21 x 29.7 cm, are included, to throw in the water and start the process.
1 pamphlet
pages: 20
size: 21 x 29.7 cm
paper: 100 gsm uncoated
colour
saddle stitched
1 photograph
size: 10.5 x 14.8 cm
paper: 250 gsm recycled silk
black & white
1 photograph
size: 21 x 29.7 cm
acetate
colour
250gsm silk paper, colour
Teresa Huertas
SUSPENDED WATERS. FLUID LANDSCAPES
A 12 pages paperback, 21x 29.7 cm, and poster, 42 x 59.4 cm, using multiple captures and sequential montage to accompany the unfolding of Icelandic landscape. The formal variety of the liquid element contributes significantly to the vitality and diversity of the landscape, and the selected images correspond to an experience of place affected by the action of water vapor. Arising from the phenomenon of suspension resulting from vigorous falling liquid masses, the steam configures the permanent mutation of the landscape, and the plastic liquidity of this form of suspended water is responsible for the constant metamorphosis of the place. In a slow flow of erasure/dissolution and reconstruction of the visible, fluid matter, of varying densities, generates unstable atmospheres that affect the subject's experience.
1 pamphlet
pages: 12
size: 21x 29.7 cm
paper: 120 gsm uncoated colour
saddle stitched
1 poster
size: 42 x 59.4 cm
paper: 100gsm uncoated colour
Carla Fragata
SILVER SKY
A 24 pages pamphlet, 29.7x 21 cm,of a journey forced across the Atlantic mourning the diasporic waters of exile from Africa, a land between the sea and the desert. Since the home country water has been lost in childhood with displacement, and the trauma was kept a secret, the process of liquid memories involved resorting to other waters and tell the story through the father’s memories of the family trip aboard the ship Silver Sky. This involved returning family photographs of the freighter, notebooks fallen and recovered from water, rusty and oxidated objects, to water again. Inkjet prints were immersed in rainwater for 10 minutes (each minute representing a day’s journey on the freighter) with splashes of Vila Real de Santo António sea water, moss, blue acrylic paint, vinyl glue, salt, maritime clay from the Portuguese Costa Vicentina and Namib Desert sand. A poster 42 x 59.4 cm of people on board SILVER SKY conveys submersed memories of “the entire city on a ship.”
1 pamphlet
pages: 24
size: 21x 29.7 cm
paper: 100 gsm recycled natural colour
saddle stitched
1 poster
size: 42 x 59.4 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated colour
Eduardo Sousa Ribeiro
A CALL TO ACTION
A 44 pages pamphlet, 21x 14.8 cm, started from a map found at Lisbon Flea Market. The back of the map records the moisture absorbed by the paper. From here, a series of photographs are taken in an exploratory way to the stains memorized on the paper.
1 pamphlet
pages: 44
size: 21 x 14.8 cm
paper: 120 gsm uncoated
colour
saddle stitched
Manuela Matos Monteiro
INFILTRATIONS
Water infiltrating walls in a 16 pages pamphlet, 29.7 x 21 cm, and poster 42x 59.4 cm. Current photographs of infiltrations, connecting to memories of the family home, where infiltrations were manifest in the water that, in the form of humidity, peeled the different layers of paint and lime. Infiltrations move water in silent, invisible, clandestine movements, creating capillaries through unpredictable routes. Memory, like water, infiltrates gently, and gently reveal itself.
1 pamphlet
pages: 16
size: 29.7 x 21 cm
paper: 100 gsm recycled natural, colour
saddle stitched
1 poster
size: 42x 59.4 cm
paper: 120 gsm uncoated, colour
Luís Carvalhal
WATERED DOWN (APAISADO)
The plane trip from Lisbon to the Azores is two and a half hours over the Atlantic Ocean. Observing the immensity of water surrounding the nine small islands, between Europe and America, was the first moment of passion for the archipelago. It inspired the creation of the photobook titled Apaisado that, for technical printing errors, was never published. A 28 pages pamphlet, 29.7 x 21 cm, documents the process of returning the photobook to the waters in its photographs. The deconstruction and manipulation of the book object, to create a set of pieces, symbolizes the power of the liquid medium over the ephemerality of the image on paper. A poster, 42x 59.4 cm, shows “The Rock.” Pages from the book were made into paper pulp and shaped to simulate a cliff from the periphery of the island,
a reference to the volcanic origin of the archipelago. This was then placed again over water and photographed almost like if it was a scale model.
1 pamphlet
pages: 28
size: 29.7 x 21 cm
paper: 120 gsm recycled natural
colour
saddle stitched
1 poster
size: 42x 59.4 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated
colour
Natércia Caneira
O DIA EM QUE EU MORRI (THE DAY I DIED)
A 28 sides pamphlet, 29.7 x 21 cm, narrating a near-death experience occurring whilst diving into the deep waters of Africa. A story of personal development narrated at a slow pace, the fluid passage between life and death with water filing the lungs, a journey that ends with personal growth and mind expansion.
1 pamphlet
pages: 28
size: 29.7 x 21 cm
paper: 120 gsm uncoated colour
saddle stitched
Ana Botelho
GUSH
A 24 pages pamphlet, 21x 14.8 cm, the starting point being the public works for water extraction in the Douro River. Historical photographs were mixed with underwater photographs of the Mondego River. The goal was to wet dry areas of the photographs with a gush of distant waters. This process uncovered memories of laundresses, women who used to wash clothes in the river for a living, a story that is included in the pamphlet. A folded card, 10.5 x 14.8 cm, connects the industry of water extraction with an orphan photograph of the Lavadeiras do Mondego (Mondego laundresses).
1 pamphlet
pages: 24
size: 21x 14.8 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated
colour
saddle stitched
1 card
size: 10.5 x 14.8 cm
paper: 170 gsm uncoated
black & white
4 panels
João de Goes
O LAGO (THE LAKE)
A 44 pages paperback, 21 x 29.7 cm about a lake that was, in 1981, used as a swimming pool for
a child. Childhood photographs were rephotographed to extract 3 layers: the child’s body swimming, the bottom of the lake, and the surface of water; a process centred around three layers of matter: diving, surface, and transparency. Considering the forty years interval between the child’s dives and the conceptualization of the project, the number of forty images was fixed. Ten series, each with
four images. The result of the project is a 158x132cm vertical rectangular panel.
paperback
pages: 44
size: 21 x 29.7 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated
colour
perfect binding
Inês R. Amado
CONNECTING WATERS
A 48 pages pamphlet, 21x 14.8 cm and a poster, 29.7 x 42 cm, where photographs of traditional fishing boats are immersed in bags of water, hung on a clothesline, where different kinds of water connect. Water in historical photographs of Pedrógão beach, Coimbrão in Leiria, (fisherman going to sea) mingle with real waters from the Tagus River estuary, in Barreiro, both in Portugal. They join in liquidising residues of memories, that support always processes of reassemblage. The set also contains a deck of 4 photo-text cards, 10.5 x 14.8 cm each.
1 pamphlet
pages: 48
size: 21x 14.8 cm
paper: 80 gsm uncoated colour
saddle stitched
4 cards
size: 10.5 x 14.8 cm
paper: 250 gsm, uncoated
colour
1 poster
size: 42 x 29.7 cm
paper: 100 gsm uncoated
colour and black & white
Manuela Vaz
DEPURA A ÀGUA (PURIFY THE WATER)
A 40 pages paperback, 20.3 x 12.7 cm made of photographs of water treatment stations around Portugal. The of cyanotypes were developed with water collected from Ribeira da Granja (Granja stream), one of the most important streams that crosses the city of Porto and runs by the photographer’s door. For years Manuela facilitated guided tours to various water treatment plants and got to know the complex processes of water treatment. She selected photographs from her personal archives upon which she enacted a series of symbolic processes, and with local water worked on the entire cyanotype printing process, from the dilution of the chemicals to the washing of the images after exposure to ultraviolet light.
paperback
pages: 40
size: 20.3 x 12.7 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated
colour
perfect binding
cover: 200gsm uncoated colour
Renato Roque
CEDRUS FALSUS RENATI
A 56 pages paperback, 14.8 x 10.5 cm, narrates a public art intervention in Tondela Forest (Portugal), linking the ephemeral cycle of life and death to the ephemeral cycle of photographic processes. To memorialise a dead cedar tree, a living tree of the same species was photographed; black & white prints in a gradation (from completely underexposed white to overexposed black) were immersed in trays filled with water set up around the dead tree. The photographs – of the dead tree, of the same species tree and floating in the water – are all the Cedrus Falsus species. The irony of fate had made the photograph even more false than it always is. Photus Falsus Cedri Falsi.
1 paperback
pages: 56
size: 14.8 x 10.5 cm
paper: 90 gsm uncoated
black & white
perfect binding
cover: 300gsm uncoated
Eliane Velozo and Severino Iaba
LAMA DE MORTE (DEATH MUD)
A 4-page foldout newspaper, 42x 59.4 cm, about an ecological disaster
and pollution of brazilian waterways caused by greedy reckless corporations.
On November 5, 2015, in Mariana, Minas Gerais, Brasil, a dam of mineral waste breaks,
causing destruction in the rivers and forests where the mud passes by. Nineteen people
die buried in this toxic sludge. On November 11, 2015, reacting to what happened,
the artists Eliane Velozo and Severino Iabá perform the ‘site specific’ ‘Death Mud’,
in the center of Belo Horizonte city,Plaza 7, a place thousands of people pass by every day.
The public becomes involved in the project, pouring drinking water over the performer’s body,
easing his suffering under a scorching sun, a metaphor for the impossibility of minimizing
the suffering of those who died in Mariana.
1 poster
size: 42 x 29.7 cm
paper: 120gsm
uncoated
colour
Susana Paiva
SKIN
A poster folded in four, 42x 59.4 cm, conveying the impression that everything happens on the skin surface. A thermal sublimation print on photographic paper was submerged in tap water (from Paredes, Portugal), and left for 7 days left exposed to the weather, outside the house. A fragment from Vilem Flusser’s unpublished text The Skin adds to the visualisation of skin’s materiality as a watery border.
1 poster
size: 42 x 29.7 cm
paper: 90 gsm
uncoated
black & white
Mide Plácido
ESTADO DE IMERGÊNCIA / STATE OF IMMERGENCY
A print, 18.3 x 27.3 about waking up, some day in March 2020, thinking to be possible one’s home to become one’s tomb: a metaphor for who we are in a daily life that flows in waiting; I am condemned to be free; I need to act.
1 photograph
size: 18.3 x 27.3 cm
paper: 120 gsm uncoated
colour
contact
paula roush ::: paularoush@gmail.com
msdm studio ::: msdm@msdm.org.uk