BGSW / Ustka

Guided tour through the exhibition and meeting with artist

The Coalition of Waters exhibition has roots in a specific place – right where the land meets the Baltic Sea. This sea is unique in that it transformed from a closed lake into an inland body of water with a narrow strait connecting it to the ocean. Its movements – opening, closing, flowing – provide a point of departure for a reflection on ways of coexisting, for observing practices that draw upon water and its properties, and building relationships between water, the body and community.

Water is an element, yet it is also a body, memory, and a space of mundane and political tensions. It is a medium of relationships; it is an object of rationing and a control tool. The lack of it, the rationing or seizure of it are forms of violence – water becomes an instrument of power.

The exhibition advocates a careful and tender approach to denigrated problems and phenomena that are pushed beyond the social discourse. Thinking with a “water body” fully reveals the interconnections – including flows, rhythms and cycles, menstrual ones included. The exhibition draws upon the cultural significance of water and the social ecologies which demonstrate that access to crucial resources or the lack of it leads to inequalities and exclusions. Not only a witness to violence, water is also an instrument of managing living things.

Coalition of Waters search for alliances in difficult times, for togetherness, for alignments of all waters: those around us and those within our bodies. It attempts to build commonality driven by reciprocity and to rediscover relations with the “many,” to be seen as “one.” Édouard Glissant with his theory is a coalition partner in this exhibition – here, by the Baltic Sea, we can learn about the diversity of the world and life, and maintain a connection with ourselves.

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund – a state special-purpose fund.

Honorary Patron: Marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodship Mieczysław Struk, Mayor of the City of Ustka Jacek Maniszewski, President of the City of Słupsk Krystyna Danilecka-Wojewódzka

Media Patrons: Miej Miejsce, NN6T, Restart, Szum Magazine