Shelby Meyers + Kyle Pollack + Colin Poranski [Water Rite]

Water Rite

Water is essential to life and central to culture. The material properties of water – reflection and lucidity, ripple and burble – underpin its cultural associations with knowledge and understanding, cleansing and renewal. Yet water also concentrates; as it flows over and through surfaces, contaminants are released, flowing with the water, concentrating in reservoirs. The bells, mirrors and white ribbons of Water Rite highlights the material properties of water, and form the infrastructure for a mimetic ritual where participants engage in the fouling of a reservoir through the cleansing of objects. As the water in the bowl is slowly soiled, participants ponder their own role within the watershed and cycle, reflected back to the sky above the farm field.