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Publication
Abstract
Source
Seas of Material Residues,
or Diving into the Wayward
Archive of the Moscow Canal
This chapter engages with multiple narratives produced during and after the construction of the Moscow Canal and explores its official history as preserved in archives and literary publications. Drawing on Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s notion of the "two sides
of historicity", it analyses the shattered structure of the master narrative and turns to the canal's to illuminate perpetuated absences. The chapter argues that water functions as a powerful yet overlooked narrative device and approaches the waterway
as infrastructure to trace various figurations of the aqueous
as theorised by Astrida Neimanis, with a particular focus on its capacity to archive congeries of nonhuman matter, human remains, and manufactured things, or material residues—
a conceptual proposition the chapter makes, deriving
from the work by Susan Schuppli on material witness.
Translation of Hydrofeminisim,
or On Becoming a Body
of Water by Astrida Neimanis into Russian (О становлении водным телом)
halo media (2026): vol. 3
(Upcoming).
Soviet Industrial Time
and Nonscalable Temporalities: Telling Time with Hydraulic Seas
This chapter uses Anna Tsing’s theory of nonscalability
as an entry point to explore the organisation of Soviet industrial time by means of water reservoirs constructed
as part of the Great Volga project during the first three five-year plans. It draws on infrastructure studies and recent investigations into the materiality of water and offers
an operative concept of a hydraulic sea. This concept conceives of socio-technological water bodies as positioning technologies that facilitate navigation in the thick time
of Soviet industrialisation and reveals the functioning
of nonscalable temporalities. In analysing how these temporal flows related to Soviet industrial time, the chapter discusses the conceptual and material limitations inherent
to the latter’s unfolding.
What is a River? Relating
to a body of Water in a City
Departing from the notion of modern water as a relational logic that limits wet matter to a compound of hydrogen
and oxygen, this essay offers an alternative relational logic that conceives of a river as an incommensurable, complex, and interspecies environment.
It draws from posthuman feminist and infrastructure studies and investigates three techno-scientific tools that seek
to regulate the watercourse yet fail to accomplish this task:
a water reservoir, a lock, and a sewer. By carefully observing how these tools reorganize a river, the project explores
the power of water over urban facilities and its capacity
to gestate elusive life forms.
Along unseen rivers.
Ed. by Christina Pestova-
Ejiksson, 2024. Part of the
Shared Future Programme
by the Swiss Cultural Council
Pro Helvetia.
Stories for the Hydraulic
Seas on the Volga
The project revisits three water reservoirs in Russia—colloquially known as “seas”—to interrogate the developmental narrative
of Soviet modernity by producing stories beyond this framework. By engaging with the objects found during field trips to these towns—a sculpture, a photograph, and an architectural model—this project offers a way to reconsider the histories
of the submerged places that persist underwater, in-between spaces, in memory, and through material artefacts.
The London Conference
in Critical Thought, 2022;
After Progress, curated by
Martin Savransky and Craig
Lundy.
Weather
What infrastructures sustain modes of weather making? How do residues of various environments settle in the bodies? In what ways have collective microclimates enacted resistance against certain weather conditions? The texts selected in this reader provide careful observations, critical remarks, and subversive comments in response to these questions.
Video
Description
Selected Presentations
Hydraulic Seas on the Volga River
2022–ongoing
This project develops the operative concept of the hydraulic sea
to engage with multiple histories of water reservoirs that
underpin hydroenergy infrastructure. It reconceptualizes t
he constructed reservoir as a techno-scientific body integral
to the hydroelectric unit, thereby unsettling the dominant dam-centered imaginary. The project takes the form of a six-chapter video essay, with each chapter structured as an auto-theoretical fiction focused on a specific hydraulic sea.
Project
Description
Selected Presentations
River and (non)linearity: engineer/erode, obstruct/seep, drain/submerge
walking tour
2022
Drawing on Dilip da Cunha’s conceptualization of the river
as a line, this project proposes a walk along the Yauza River
in Moscow, examining the entanglements between water
and linearity. The route begins in an industrial zone, continues through wooded areas into a city park, and culminates
in a residential district—all connected by the river’s flow.
By slowly traversing these sites, the project demonstrates how urban development transforms a body of water and how the river, in turn, mediates relationships among human and nonhuman bodies.
The Future, creative writing
programme curated
by Oksana Vasyakina
Water and Knowledge
performative reading session
with Rebecca Cheong
2022
This reading session is titled after the eponymous essay
by Astrida Neimanis, in which the cultural theorist introduces
the concept of “thinking with water” as an alternative mode
of knowledge production and reflects on its inherent political limitations. Guided by the notion of “hydro-logics”, the session explores embodied posthuman experiences by considering human bodies as bodies of water. It raises questions about power and violence embedded in the nature/culture divide and reproduced across human and nonhuman worlds. The session is accompanied by an interactive digital platform featuring selected quotations, images, diagrams, and other visual materials.
Rockpool, Ocean Archive
(TBA21–Academy)
Aquatic Archives
performative essay
as part of residues of wetness
2021
This essay explores the concept of an aquatic archive in response to UMBILIC—a moving image essay film by Natasha Ruwona.
The essay asks: What would an aquatic archive look like? What kind of histories would this archive preserve? And would people be able to access its records? To answer these questions, it draws on a variety of literary and academic accounts related to water:
Mr Palomar’s failure to observe a wave by Italo Calvino, Dionne Brand’s experience of living on an island in the open sea, Astrida Neimanis’s embodied phenomenological engagement with bodies of water and Philip Steinberg’s geographical observation of water’s fragmentariness, among others.
David Dale Gallery
sliding on the horizontal axis of the aquatic
performative reading session
as part of navigating in/with/through the water by residues of wetness
2021
navigating in/with/through the water emerges as a continued exploration of watery discourses and takes the shape of three reading sessions. The sessions look at a selection of written, visual and audio material. Through imaginary, scientific, material and linguistic accounts, every session considers water both fleeting and tangible. Manoeuvering various sources requires a direction; therefore, each session utilises a distinct orientation when thinking with the water: horizontal, circular, and tentacular.
sliding on the horizontal axis of the aquatic, the first session, travels to the open sea. This session is inspired by personal experience of living on a landlocked territory and rarely going to the sea, once a year or two. During the session, participants are invited to move from a terrestrial location towards the beach and stop by on the islands before submerging into the aquatic. The session proposes to observe how the surrounding environments change, how the experiences of space and time transform, and how visual and bodily responses adapt.
The reading list includes texts by Philip Steinberg, Italo Calvino, Michael Taussig, Dionne Brand, Stefan Helmreich, and Octavia Butler.
self-organised online
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