In a dark enclosed womb of space, the video projects over a large vase, filled with water. It features the Japanese art of suminagashi, spoken poetry, and percussive drums. The projection overlaps the glass, creating new shadows and reflections. This is an immersive experience, playing with materials such as ink and glass, and the metaphor of water as the unconscious mind.

What We Wrote on the Water explores the dialectical flow between creator and viewer, form and meaning, being both on the surface of the water and under it. The viewer leaves refreshed, having temporarily been elsewhere.

Text by Miriam Sagan, drumming by Tim Brown.

raindrops marred the page
as I pulled
black ink on to cheap paper
marks caught
like remnant fossils
and isn’t that
memory

you didn’t know
where you were going
when you started—
but could that
possibly be true
considering
who you are
what you knew about fate

who kept close?
who went to the pow-wow?
who ate bitter greens?
who died at the border?
who went to Paris?
who went to Carrizozo?
who turned an empty lot into a garden?
who beat the devil in a fiddling contest?

Babel, your ziggurat
yields silence

glass fish in the plastic vial of the sea
what lay in the endless caverns if not desire
stop, you are scaring me
by talking
as if God
wanted something
in particular

I kept close
I went to the pow-wow
I ate bitter greens
I died at the border
I went to Paris
I went to Carrizozo
I turned an empty lot into a garden
I beat the devil in a fiddling contest