A boat floats because of buoyancy. An upward force of displaced water that’s equal to, or greater than the weight of its hull keeps it from sinking. Depending on the balance of pressure between fluid and object, an object (such as said boat) will be partially or fully immersed. This physical phenomenon depends on an interplay of the aforementioned conditions, along with the presence of a gravitational field, and an optimal density differential. The third installment of Creamcake’s “Is it cold in the water?” intermittent event series on the Hošek Contemporary motorship presents an equally contingent occurrence on the south-east bank of the River Spree from July 12 to 13.
Invited artists Chris Williams and Lester St. Louis of improvisatory electro-acoustic duo HxH assemble an international group of participants to create a spontaneous, liquid installation, called “In Residence.” Flowing and floating along a current of durational action and activity on the deck of the MS Heimatland, Williams, Chienne De Garde, Gemma Ushengewe, Louise Trueheart, and Nikima Jagudajev aim to create a “third space” of social interaction, community building, and civic engagement. Constant change is the piece’s only guarantee, as it takes place over many hours, shifting its perception from being a participatory endeavor, to an immersive, meditative, discursive one. Music, sound, and text; video, dance, and movement; lectures, talks, and conversation; comfort and discomfort, food and drink, light and space, all play a part in this extended happening and its primary objective is in working “to hold and make space with each other.”
The primary function of “In Residence” is to design creative systems of relationships at the margins of that which is conventionally-negotiated as authorship, work character, or authentic expression, and whose poetics liquefy these conventions in an artful-virtuosic and / or playful-banal manner. Collaboration appears here, not only as the interconnection of different creative energies, but as a means of transport for artistic processes, thereby continually re-concretizing their own format. It is as much about the people doing it as it is about the work(s) being witnessed.
As HxH take over the Hošek stage, the Creamcake-curated “Is it cold in the water?” moving-image program—now online at 3hdTV—will be screening IRL in the gallery. The film selection, including work by AbuQadim Haqq, DeForrest Brown, Jr., & Dopplereffekt, Davi Pontes, Emilija Škarnulytė, Rita Macedo, and Seba Calfuqueo, reflects on the distinct systems within which water circulates, while adding to the multi-faceted “In Residence” aim of interrelation.
Maintaining buoyancy can be considered a stable phenomenon under normal conditions, but it can become fragile when those conditions are less-than-ideal. Inadequate distribution, damage, or challenging environmental factors can cause a craft made to float to capsize. It takes a community to keep that from happening.
