Jenna Sutela and Primer
Water is strange. Only by force can it be made to stand still. Life is water in motion. More than just a habitat, water is a transport medium that lets nutrients and microorganisms, among other things, travel within and without us. Milk, urine, tears, spit and breath are traces of the “hypersea,” a sea on land that we, together with other terrestrial animals, are hosts to. According to geologists Dianna and Mark McMenamin, the hypersea is formed by all water held from the world ocean in the bodies of life on land.
Water shrinks upon melting, whereas most other substances expand. It has an unusually high surface tension and is particularly difficult to compress due to its strong intermolecular forces. Unlike most other substances on Earth, it exists as solid, liquid and gas under terrestrial temperatures and pressures. Further, experimental scientists can demonstrate that H2O molecules are able to organise in two different ways: either as individuals or as collectives. As individuals, water molecules flexibly form and break hydrogen bonds, allowing them to move freely. When organized collectively, they are believed to create temporary structures similar to the coordinated behavior of flocks of birds or schools of fish. Such teamwork lets water bodies bond cohesively while staying liquid.
Water can dissolve a wide range of substances, such as gases, acids, minerals and biological substances. This makes it a central component for biological and chemical processes and an indispensable component in almost every form of change, be it in the landscape or the viscera. Water is the medium of planetary and bodily communication and memory. When it moves it’s neither neutral nor unaffected, but part of the language of the hypersea, a messenger between everything.
The exhibition Trip Feed is one of the several outcomes of a four year long collaboration between Jenna Sutela and Primer. Instead of a traditional commission, we have collectively researched, built relations, tested modes of production, and curated. This process has been joined by other artists, engineers, researchers and scientists.
Accompanying Sutela’s work in Trip Feed is a collection of artifacts from Virbela Ateljé in Ytterjärna, Sweden. The casted “flowforms” (a term from John Wilkes) are designed to instill a pulsating motion in a body of water, embracing and enhancing water’s inherent patterns of movement. The flowforms represent an alternative technological tradition where design and craft are inseparable from observation of the vibrant tendencies in the material itself and its place within the wider environment. They make sensuous a scalable rhythm known to all the reservoirs of the hypersea.
Drawings by Viktor Schauberger (1885-1958), also present in the exhibition, demonstrate a longer tradition of biomimetic water-based thinking and practice. According to him, the rhythmic properties of water are key to sustainable and efficient water management. Inspired by Schauberger’s work, some biodynamic farms run their water through ovoid-shaped vessels to induce rhythms in it. Repetitive lemniscate movements replicate how blood moves in living organisms and how water meanders in a creek. It is when the water’s movement stops or suddenly changes course that it is said to receive the imprint of the cosmos.