Here

Over there, beneath the greenery

Hear

What the water has to tell us

This is how the story begins

It’s also the title of the film

Was das Wasser erzählt is a Kunst-und-Bau project of the City of Zürich for the Wohnsiedlung Leutschenbach in Zürich-Seebach. The body of work created by the artists Maria Iorio / Raphaël Cuomo comprises a film, a text installation, a book published by edition fink, and this online platform, which will be developed over the coming months to reflect all parts of the project by the time it ends. The production of the book and the finalisation of the film are under way. You are definitely going to spot a heron and a film crew at work in your neighbourhood, down by the stream! More information about the project and upcoming presentations can be found below, as well as the credits.

Entends la voix de l’eau (Birago Diop, Souffles)

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. (Toni Morrison)

L’histoire d’un ruisseau, même de celui qui naît et se perd dans la mousse, est l’histoire de l’infini (Elisée Reclus, Histoire d’un ruisseau)

Was das Wasser erzählt is the story of a stream and an invitation to listen to the murmurings of the waters. This story asks us to focus our attention on water as a source of life, life in motion, constantly changing and creating – hydropoetics. Water streams, sometimes floods, reforms bodies of water as if it retained a memory of its previous states. This water has also reflected perfectly the city’s rapid expansion over a growing number of what used to be aquatic territories. The mutations of a new neighbourhood thus combine with hydrological processes taking place on both a local and a planetary scale. The history of a stream can become the history of matter. We are carried away by the flow into the infinite cycles of the elements, into dimensions and temporalities that exceed the temporal and geographical limits of our usual way of thinking and of feeling involved in the world.

Was das Wasser erzählt turns to film as a medium through which to hear the voices and inherent language of water. Through a change of viewpoint, it also becomes possible to apprehend water as a place where ecosystems come together. Encouraging the decentring of the human, the film proposes a change of perception that reveals multi-species worlds, fragile cohabitations: the expansion of the urban environment threatens the destruction of “wild” life forced into proximity and coexistence with human animals. Now, it is not just a question of focusing attention on water, of showing its invisible presences and multiple states, rather one of concern for all the life forms it makes possible on this planet, the better to care for them.