Last December I was finally able to watch what is in fact a little video festival: "Water, Water everywhere Paean of a Vanishing Resource".
Jennifer Heath, the curator of the show had mailed me a package containing five DVDs. Each DVD carefully and beautifully choreographed. A heroic work of research, selection, organization and dedication that orchestrates the works of about fourty artists from all over the world now gathered in five juicy DVDs.
The DVDs precious content value is high on HO2 and will keep you hydrated for six hours and more. Each DVD is approximately one hour long. The eclectic mix of video artworks and documentaries are also high in nutritional value: they've kept me nourished to this day!
Embarrassingly it took me a couple of months to get organized with a working DVD player. Then came the part where I had to figure out all the matching wires to finally connect it to a TV. But I wanted to make sure it was going to be special. To enjoy it on a slighly bigger screen than just my little laptop was the plan.
From the beginning I knew I had to honour the work of Jennifer and of so many artists. After all the DVDs had travelled all the way from Boulder, Colorado to Italy, making it across the ocean to deliver a message.
So I took the day off, locked all doors, closed all blinds, switched off the computer and phones and sat back to allow all that amazing energy flow inside what had become a cozy and intimate movie theatre.
For more than six hours, I was glued to the images flooding out of my old TV (praying that the TV would not let me down in the middle of it). The stream of 'Water, Water' gushed out of the screen directly inside me the same way a glass of water does in a hot summer day when you hastily drink it and realize how good it taste and how lucky you are. I do keep forgetting that, how lucky I am, and felt even more so after watching the videos.
I'd already suspected that Water deserved full attention, but by the time I lifted all blinds back up I just wanted to scream out loud, at the light, at the seven seas and at all the eolian winds of the importance of Water. Everybody should know, listen, see, feel 'Water Water'. The alchemy of sensation generated by the videos inside me were strong and I had to share them.
Of course once out of my little private homemade theatre bubble I got immediately distracted by everyday life and by all the more or less trivial matters that animates it (although I like to argue that nothing is trivial in the end!).
Is that not what we all do: forget? Frenzied into our daily tasks, that makes us somehow detached and forgetful of our bonds that seem to thin down to a weak and distant vanishing point.
So while absorbed in our 'microcosms', people like Jennifer Heath frantically work in their magic shop. They dedicate their time and energy to manufacture awareness and to supply us with what we keep forgetting: they industriously and ingenuously work at reactivating our interest in the human cause.
It has taken me another two months to put aside my daily chores, some excuses and some laziness too, to finally write about Water Water, although I have been talking about it with friends and colleagues even started some heated debate and tried to place the Festival in new venues. But maybe you could help too? Wouldn't it be wonderful to have 'Water water' keep flowing?
Jennifer has secured the initial trait of Water Water's course. It's travelling through museums and galleries across the US but wouldn't it be wonderful to see its journey continue all over?
My daily life: a crowded accumulation of bit and pieces that pile up to make my day. Water runs through it every day, and my pile absorbs it like a dry plant. Daily, I swallow, I soak, I consume, I suck, I splash, I sponge and dissipate water.
Water, the new Petrolium? How awful is that? And not just as a visual. I like my water clear, clean and pure, as well as energizing and fresh, thirst quenching and poetic abundant and universal. I like my water crime-free.
Water is my closest intimate friend that I share with the world. I love water, the sound of it distresses me and the touch of it irrigates me with well-being.
In this video festival, 40 personal viewpoints are brought together under the umbrella of Water. It's art, it's documentaries, it's real, it's only water.
So if you receive an email from me, don't worry it's just me trying to do my job and "save the world"! And maybe you could help in spreading the word and the work to the world.
http://www.waterwatereverywhere-artshow.com/
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