Pororoca

Glossary

River Thames, UK

(P) Bone sphere (Juan Fernando Herran 07.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] Bermondsey, a bit further, was the site of slaughterhouses, and the place where all remains - bones - were thrown to the river. Walking along the southbank in low tide, I started to find bones and bones and bones; I started collecting them and taking them to college. I had mountains of bones, some very strange. Better not to think of some. I took them to the archaeological museum to be classified, even if you can sort of recognise if they are human or not. With all these bones I made a big bone sphere, with a n interior fiberglass and resin structure that floated. At that time I was invited to the Havana Biennale, and I wanted to talk about the political isolation of the island but from here, the UK where I was then and where I was finding vestiges of the past times. I wanted to do a parallel gesture of the biologic envoys from the Americas to Europe, but inverting it: from London to Cuba. With the sphere I went to Lands End, and from there I gave the sphere to the waters. Not on the Thames estuary but on the west trying to get as close as possible to Cuba as I could. There is a circulation of the northern Atlantic that could, in principle, something that floats from Lands End could arrive to the Caribbean. I researched currents, two hours after the sphere was gone, with a flag that highlighted that it was in direction to Havana. In Cuba I showed photographs of this bone wall starting to float away, and read a beautiful navigation text that describes how currents from the UK are in dialogue with the Caribbean. It is conceptual, and poetic. It speaks about material and other returns. Inverts the colonial relationship. And that is the bone sphere, an artwork entitled at. 50 02' N - Long. 5? 40'W, (1994).

(V) = Verb, concept, expressions

(L) = Place

(B) = Botanic

(P) = People, person, entities

(E) = Event, happening, celebration

(O) = Object

Gathered after our immersion in February 2024

Transcribed and translated by Catalina Mejia Moreno (CMM), Gabriela Leandro Pereira (GLP) and Felipe Arturo (FA).

Each of the glossaries is shaped and defined by some of the most significant experiences we had in Brazil, Colombia and the UK – deep listening as a collective act and activation, but also movement, dance, and gratitude despite opaque and extreme forms of violence that their waters, their ecosystems, beings, entities and their people continue to face. During our three immersions we were offered words (see glossaries) that in nuanced and not so nuanced ways counter, build upon, resist colonial, racialised and environmental damage. That connect threads and weave possibilities of life and hope. Our decision then, was to bring all those words of possibility in the form of three glossaries - one per each immersion.

(V) Desembocaduras inciertas / Uncertain Mouths by Felipe Arturo

[ES] Visitamos tres territorios de desembocaduras. Tendríamos que empezar por decir que por naturaleza los ríos no tienen contornos definitivos, así como tampoco los mares. Ríos y mares desafían constantemente nuestro deseo delimitador y su volumen crece y decrece abarcando más o menos territorio con cada onda, indefiniéndose con cada marea. Su encuentro, el de los mares y los ríos, lugares que llamamos desembocadu-ras y también estuarios, no podrían ser menos ambiguos, sino tal vez la suma de una doble indefinición, que a diferencia de la presencia afirmativa producto de una doble negación se determina bajo una naturaleza de constante incertidumbre. Sus aguas saladas y dulces disuelven el río en mar y el mar en río bajo el principio terrenal de que toda gota ha sido y será todas las gotas de agua, es decir que cada cuerpo de agua es hipotéticamente indistinguible de los otros, aunque nuestros lenguajes y nuestras ciudades se obstinan en delimitarlos.

(V) Desembocaduras inciertas / Uncertain Mouths by Felipe Arturo

[EN] We visited three territories of river mouths. We should start by saying that, by nature, rivers do not have definitive boundaries, just as seas do not. Rivers and seas constantly defy our desire to delimit them, and their volume grows and shrinks, encompassing more or less territory with each wave, becoming undefined with each tide. Their meeting—the meeting of seas and rivers, places we call mouths or estuaries—could not be less ambiguous. Perhaps it is the sum of a double uncertainty, which, unlike the affirmative presence resulting from a double negation, is defined by a nature of constant unpredictability. Their salty and fresh waters dissolve the river into the sea and the sea into the river, under the earthly principle that every drop has been and will be all drops of water. That is to say, each body of water is hypothetically indistinguishable from the others, even though our languages and our cities insist on delimiting them.

(V) Changeless Change (Ceri Hedderwick Turner 09.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] describes how rivers symbolises constant change, both as they flow from the mountain to the sea but also as their path moves and shapes the landscape they embrace [paraphrased from 'Taming the Flood' by Jeremy Purseglove]. Changeless Change in that they are forever change; they are changeless in the fact that they change. They are constant in the fact that they are always changing them, but we try to get them under control. And that just leads to problems for ourselves as well as the loss of nature and wilderness.

(V) Rejuvenation (Ceri Hedderwick Turner 09.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] the embodied experience of river swimming and bathing. The fresh, cold water engulfs your body and brings your senses alive. You feel part of the waterscape.

(V) Exchange (Ceri Hedderwick Turner 09.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] the back and forth of salt and freshwater, what the rising of the tide brings and the lowering of the tide leaves behind. This may also suggest some of the more troubled human history that estuaries have been part of. With the Thames, you see the river a lot. Rivers are interesting in that sense. Actually they are always passive, private land. So you don’t really … Or if you are going through a city, they are walled off. Or you are on a public footpath. It is very indirect, being able to get close to it - feels quite distant.

[EN] control bodies of water, detour them, canalise them. The sewage map, done throughout many centuries. All is canalised. And when you see the maps, you can reconstruct the many river trajectories by following street names of all rivers, which alludes to former watery rivery landscapes. There is an overlap between the sewage outputs along the river and these urban traces and geographic transformations through human hands. Manhole covers are all very different. Some are called relief valves. The interior pressure of the sewage system pushes these valves that are made of cast iron - really heavy, opening the system and releasing its pressure and water. I found many, and thought they were all rivers, but not all were rivers. Some belong to the sewage system itself. This city doesn’t stop thinking about its infrastructures; not the river’s either. It is like science fiction. I managed to walk into some of the river’s sewage discharge tunnels with people from the Thames water then, and its architecture is magnificent; beautiful monumental river structures. The work of art coming from this date from 1992-4 entitled Walbrook.

(O) Flotsam and Jetsam (Juan Fernando Herran 07.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] Talking about material returns and material culture, Flotsam and Jetsam is an artwork part of the Bank of the Republic of Colombia in Bogotá. Lead, and it is a replica of a side keel of a nineteenth century ship. A flat ship that brings construction material to the city through the Thames that has two lateral keels that are lowered once the ship goes into the open sea for stability. It measures 5.5m by 3m wide, and it is beautiful. I found it by the riverside, thrown by the river. It is a species of huge dragonfly wing. What I did was to bring pieces of lead sheets and hammer them around the object to do an imprint to then make a copy of the object. The beautiful thing about this imprint is that it retains the volume of the original piece, different from a drawing, and can be assembled and disassembled. Lead has also material implications. Its vapors are toxic, but not by touch. But of course they go beyond this.

(O) Bog Bodies (Holly Birtles 07.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] I was born in Holbridge in the estuary and my work has recurrently been in relation to the Thames. Bog bodies is a collaborative exhibition which interrogates the complexities of wetland mysteries in the Thames Estuary and the Fenland Marshes through an exploration of life, death and metamorphosis. A bog preserves the body in death enabling us to travel back in time as far as the Mesolithic period through a dense soup inhabited by complex ecologies that thrive in the anaerobic surroundings, creating a biochemical and physical occurrence that facilitates the mummification of prehistoric humans. These turgid, dark, fleshy wetlands of the Thames estuary present treacherous environmental conditions that reveal life and death. The bog body is symbolic – representing metamorphosis and degradation; the vital mud and turbid waters evoke an underworld hell that exposes seemingly paranormal curiosities.

(O) Estuary Monster (Holly Birtles 07.07.24 by CMM)

[EN]Estuary Monster is a photomontage, created of archival and Ai images that articulates the sacred and tragic tales of the area, juxtaposed with associated ecological trauma. Drawing on performance documentation, re-appropriation, AI-generated imagery, and self-portraiture it is part of a wider project to represent a collaborative response to selected estuary locations. But there might be and there are other estuary monsters; there are always in the Thames.

(V) Embedded (Jess Rowley 08.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] The water conceals histories. Bones, artifacts and stories once flowing through the Thames and its tributaries, hidden until released at random.

(O) Vessel (Jess Rowley, London, 07.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] Clay is as fragile and vulnerable as our bodies. As Felipe mentioned it comes from the ancestral bed of rivers and seas. Holding clay in your hands I invite you to consider a vessel beyond its immediate meaning. A vessel, a clay object for offering gratitude and prosperity to the Thames. Water flows through the clay, allowing it to sink to the river bed, and return to the river banks, if the river sees fit.

(V) Mudlark (Jess Rowley 08.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] To observe, gather, collect and fantasize. A process of connecting to the waters through the objects that have been offered or lost to its rapids.

(V)Confused (Jess Rowley, London, 07.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] ‘How does the river feel? I think the Thames is confused.’

(V) Uncontainable (Tom Dyckhoff, London, 08.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] ‘How can you contain a river? How can you tame it? You can try, but it will always find its way to run as water you cannot control. As much as you try. Water is uncontainable. The Thames is uncontainable, despite the long and forceful histories it has been subject of. Its distinctive tides have been turned into belligerent movements of water.’

(V) Care (Nica Rawhani-Sabet, Southend-on-Sea,09.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin with the river Thames.’

(V) Ebb and Flow (Nica Rawhani-Sabet, Southend-on-Sea,09.07.24 by CMM)

[EN] ‘the natural continuation of life, and flow, and waters together. The change that comes with it, to which we should be open and open hearted.’

(P) Father Thames (Jessica Rowley 08.07.24 by CMM):

Called by some baba Thames, said to rule the Thames inland of Teddington Lock, and inhabits the Thames Valley. His statue appears along the Thames, in multiple places, but when asking around no one anywhere these really are or who he really is. There is a Mother Thames too.

Can he embody the myths, stilt, tributaries, currents, legacy, connection, offerings, ceremonies, mysteries, unions, trades, losses, burials, hope, blessings, sacredness that the Thames holds?