3. Wetlands

Installation by Vivian Hernandez and Boen Kim

Wetlands 2022

Wetlands is a cooperation project between the artists Boeun Kim and Vivian Hernandez. This project aims to create a sound interactive installation in connection with the seeds structures, the rocks and the public. In order to re-think, and re-generate the interconnectivity that exist between the humans and the non-human agents. By touching the surface of the object that lay in the ground the viewer can join the sound composition with the natural objects in the space and create a exercise of communication.

Theoretical Background of the project

What does it mean to bring water to Bremen?

Carrying and bringing water is such a simple and basic gesture that is embedded in our life, a fragile gesture that calls for community and connections, but we often forget it. The simplicity of appreciating connections. Wetlands is an invitation to become part of… and embrace the tangible spectrum of a simple connection between
human and non-human agents. See and feel the surroundings with yourself and others. Under the concept of D.W.O. Doing with Others we created an installation where people could compose beside and with the sound of
water. By creating an interactive installation where the participant could compose a melody in cooperation with others, and by establishing a physical connection with the part of the installation in this case with rocks and seeds. This explores the different possibilities of understanding the connection with the non-human. Long the process and during the exhibition we saw and experience different ways of approaching a “system” that should “serve a proper purpose.” Since we gave allowance to the Figure 1 Installation Wetlands 2022 people of acting as they wanted and feel free on experience the interaction with the seed and rock. Some of them took the time to understand it, touch the plants and rocks and play with the sound this would generate. Others in contrast, did approach the process in a different manner, that
we would like to call roughness by stepping into the gras and rocks. Something that intrigue us deeply. This show some of the difficulties of interacting with life agents and non-human. As soon it is display as an object for “use” some people take this license to overpower the objects at the point of destroying it. This last experience answers the urgency of bring water to Bremen as a
metaphor. Open the possibility of passively understand the interaction and hear the “other”, the things that allegedly doesn’t have much relation with us.