© Gedske Ramlov
In a river where water no longer flows
On an island where it has always been scarce
In a world where it will soon be lacking
Landscape intervention
by Gedske Ramløv
On one of our walks on the island of Sifnos in search of wells, cisterns and stories related to their past function of collecting and preserving the scarce water, and to the recent lack of safeguarding of the common preciousness that water is, we came to a river that marks the junction between Ano Petali and Artemonas connected with a bridge.
In terms of water, the river “where women once did the laundry and children listened to frogs” no longer exists. In recent times, part of the riverbed was filled up with concrete, in order to give way to a road.
The dried out river soon appeared to me as a paradigm for our present time's inability of foresight and of social attention, a time which only seeks out easy solutions for profit, increasingly made possible by modern technology.
Under the bridge, as I noticed the furrow left by the infinite flow of the river, it came to me to intervene exactly there, with an action that seemed to arise right in-between the integrity of a child's game and the subtlety of a ritual of magic. With a latent yearning to 'resurrect’ the flowing river.
Along the banks of the river that no longer exists, I collected stones of various sizes, enough to fill up the furrow that water had sculpted on the rocks, and brought them home. In the darkness of my room, I treated them with chemicals that would turn them blue by the first rays of sunlight.
At the end of my action on the rocks, as an ultimate gesture of desperation, or of hope, I poured water on the blue stones, almost personifying the arcane figure of Temperance, who represents the innate harmony existing in nature and that, unlike man, perpetuates the need for balance among all the living.
This work was produced in the framework of the residency
The Sound of Water Behind the Sound of the Wind,
on the island of Sifnos, Greece.
Art residency from 12th–26th October 2024