Tania Candiani

The Water Office seeks to present, through artistic practices, a platform for dissenting voices to function as “trenches” in the “water wars” that were predicted the end of the last century and have already arrived. Inspired by Humboldt, the first scientist is talking about climate change, Tania Candiani recorded a literary, visual, and sound experience by walking between along the Potomac River, in Washington DC. The artist chose excerpts from Humboldt’s “Personal Narrative” book, where the botanist narrates the world as an interconnected system of three-dimensional times; all of this as an ecological system.

This walk showed mechanisms of observation and emotional approach to the landscape, creating interconnections with the world of nature, through the perspective of the participants in a workshop.

As a result, Walking the River shows a series of works: an audiovisual essay with recordings and a selection of texts from all participants in the workshop, Notebooks with drawings, frottages, and treasures collected during the walk along the river. As well as a wall installation of a selection of documentation, which was the result of my research at the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History in Smithsonian, mainly focused on collections related to the construction of the Washington Aqueduct and the Supply Commission of Water, as well as other materials found in old bookstores, and a representation of the Potomac river line assembled with stones from the same river.