Foreword
Before I begin down what will hopefully be a long and winding road, I feel that it is important to outline a few things. I would like to start by discussing the most critical findings of my MA - I will briefly discuss some important ideas, a few key theorists and my practice. I will then finish by laying out the aims for this project in regards to its physical direction, the theory I will be building upon and the general character of the work I will be creating moving forward.
The concept of most importance to both my MA and current practice is that water is alive and must be legally recognised with rights as soon as possible. Whilst this may seem alien to most people, it is a simple and immutable fact. Water as an entity is vast, intricate and delicate. It exists as a worldwide tapestry of lakes, rivers, seas, clouds, creatures, puddles, people, plants, droplets and aquifers. All life on earth was once born from water and will one day return to it. And whilst this is a significant understatement, all living things rely upon this worlds waters to survive. When taking these facts into account you would think that as a species whose bodies are made up of 55-60% water on average, and that cannot survive longer than around 3 days without water, we would understand its vital importance. The sad reality is however that our planets hydrosphere has not been well looked after during our tenure atop earths food chain. Our modern post-industrial societies pollute on a grand scale and with seemingly no care for its effects upon the waters we owe our continued existence to.
Further compounding this issue is the reality that our governments (the people with the power to actually do something about this) simply do not care. During the research for my MA I made a startling discovery. Whilst searching for data on the numbers of protected species in Plymouth's local waterways, I chanced upon open-source water quality data on the DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) website. What I found shocked me. Despite highly dangerous compounds like Tributyltin, Polybrominated Diphenyl-ethers and specific pollutants like Arsenic, Copper and Zinc either failing their tests all together or being found in high levels within the Tamar water body - it was decided in 2022 that these tests were no longer required. The Tamar is regarded by the Environment agency as a HMWB (Heavily Modified Water Body) due to the fact that humans have changed its structure so significantly that reverting it back to its natural state would have a disproportionately negative social and economic impact on the surrounding area. HMWBs are not required to achieve an overall water quality status of “good”, instead -
Artificial and heavily modified water bodies (AWB/HMWBs) have to achieve an alternative objective of "good ecological potential” (GEP). The objective of GEP is similar to good status but takes into account the constraints imposed by the social and/or economic uses. - (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - 2009)
This legal loophole combined with the current lack of water quality testing is seriously concerning, and when taking into account the proximity of HMNB Devonport also shines a light on a serious conflict of interest - namely that if the "uses" in question are the main contributors to the water bodies pollution, then this designation in effect gives those industries free reign to continue their pollution unchallenged. Thus, through the designation of HMWB status the government both legitimises and legalises pollution, rather than tackling it. The torch then, is passed to us as citizens to tackle these problems. We as individuals must acknowledge the vital role water holds within our lives, and begin the process of restoring the waters of this planet back to life.
It became fairly clear to me during the course of my final MA project that my work needed to address this, and as such I began formulating a methodology to approach my practice as a method of co-creation. However for this to make sense I must first layout some context. One of the most influential references for my MA's conceptual direction was the writing of Astrida Neimanis, specifically the books Bodies of Water, Human Rights and the Hydrocommons (2009) and Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (2019). During both pieces of writing Neimanis makes repeated calls for humanity to re-understand its role as part of the greater hydrosphere of our planet. She discusses at great detail the reality that as humans we are bodies of water, and as such must come to understand that by polluting the water of our planet we are also polluting ourselves. During “Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (2019)” Neimanis makes the argument that -
Posthuman gestationality stresses that as bodies of water we are both different and in common; water calls on us to give an account of our own (very human) politics of location, even as this situatedness will always swim beyond our masterful grasp, finding confluence with other bodies and times. - (Neimanis - 2019)
This is in respect to the books opening idea, namely that by shifting our understanding of embodiment to include our own wateriness, we can challenge the pervasive humanist ideas that govern our modern western society. As this is exactly what I wanted my work to achieve, my MA project embraced the notion of embodied wateriness and therefore is by definition posthuman in its approach. My intention for including posthumanism as part of the works foundation was to use the fundamental interconnectedness of humans and water as a tool to begin challenging my viewers to ask questions surrounding the role they play as individuals within our current global water crisis.
Whilst the role water played within my MA project was built upon the work of Astrida Neimanis, my reference for the application of posthumanism within my photographic practice was instead informed by the essay “Post Documentary, Post Photography” by Martha Rosler (2006). When considering the notion of intrinsic interconnectedness in regards to bodies of water (my main photographic subjects) and humanity (me, the photographer) - it became apparent that the traditional role of the documentarian as an “outsider” (Rosler, 2006) is rendered moot by the feminist posthuman arguments that Neimanis expertly crafts.
Returning to my original point - and hopefully with some context successfully added - my approach was instead built from the perspective of embodied co-creation. The general concept of this was to remove the traditional separation of "subject" and "photographer" from my work - with my goal being to instead treat the "subject" - in this case water - as both an equal party and a valued participant that actively contributed to the work. This was achieved by developing my photographic film with water sampled at the same location the images were shot, with this being utilised as a method to extend the co-creative nature of my work to within the physical materiality of the images themselves. By introducing water as an actor with the same level of input as myself, the physical output of the project became far more aligned with its core theoretical argument - namely that artists that use water as part of their practice must respect it as both alive and animate.