Wet-Togetherness on the e-flux podcast

The 13th Shanghai Biennale releases three new episodes of the Wet-Togetherness series, which includes sound pieces commissioned by the Biennale from artists and scholars: Torkwase Dyson, Itziar Okariz, Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun (in collaboration), Michael Wang, Iván L. Munuera, P. Staff, and Himali Singh Soin.

These three episodes are titled Breathing, Melting and Transfusing.

Bodies exceed humanity. They remind us that we are part of something vaster—and smaller—more complex, more connected than our mere existence as an atomized species. Our bodies, and bodies in general, are comprised of heterogeneity and multitudes. All bodies are wet collective bodies defined by how they link to other bodies, places, environments, technologies. Think of breathing, clogging, decomposing, discharging, flushing, lubricating, melting, menstruating, transfusing. Bodies exist as trans- and extra-territorial beings. They live in hybridity. This porous condition produces a planetary wet-togetherness, a “commoning” force that constitutes all bodies as collective hydro-subjects.

Wet-Togetherness is a collaboration between e-flux and the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Bodies of Water, curated by Andrés Jaque, Marina Otero Verzier, Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos, and YOU Mi, and organized and promoted by the Power Station of Art. It consists of nine sound pieces in which 21 artists, activists, and researchers enact aqueousness through sound. The series has been edited by José Luis Espejo and Rubén Coll, with sound design by Tomoko Sauvage, coordination by Roberto González García, and locutions by Yang Yang.

Episode 4: Breathing. With two sound pieces by artists Torkwase Dyson and Itziar Okariz
Seemingly a banal act of taking air into the lungs and releasing it, breathing connects bodies to other bodies and bodies to the atmosphere. In breathing, bodies enact their existence and their interdependence across territories and identities. Yet breathing is too often unequally distributed, and the deprivation of air itself reminds us of the contentious, violent relations dictating the right to life.

Torkwase Dyson interrogates the violence contained in the way human bodies emerge through the infrastructures outside of them, and the forms of resistance and invented freedom enacted in the circulation, affirmation, and dissolution of bodies into the material exteriority they are to be part of.

Itziar Okariz focuses attention on breath understood as a zero degree of identity; and on how air enters and leaves the bodies, the flesh, and the fluids that compose them and their relationship with the atmosphere. Relations of fragility and interdependence.

Episode 5: Melting. With two sound pieces by the artists Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun (in collaboration) and Michael Wang
It is precisely at the melting point of a pure substance that solid and liquid forms coexist and produce each other. Glaciers and seas. Mountains and rivers. Molten rocks, soils, and climates. Entire worlds—several hundred to several thousand years old—melt into other worlds, making unexpected currents, struggles, and living conditions emerge.

Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun reflect on the impact that local policies and post-disaster reconstruction plans had in the Minjiang River after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and the way they were mitigated and responded to by local traditions, ancient wisdom, and more-than-human intelligences.

Michael Wang’s sound piece is attuned to the complex territorial entanglements that connect Shanghai to the melting glaciers of the Tibetan plateau and to the course of the Yangtze River. Ultimately, this work interrogates the power and intrinsic violence of reversibility.

Episode 6: Transfusing. With three sound pieces by scholar Iván L. Munuera and artists P. Staff and Himali Singh Soin
Bodies are permeable. They exist in continuous fluid exchange with other bodies. Yet fluids circulate differently than the bodies to which they once belonged. They pass from one body to another body, merging stories, fates, futures. They fuse health, life, or their opposite. Fluids replace components; they add something that is lacking or is desired. Fluids are given, passed onto, injected, poured, infiltrated in a sometimes unavowed hydro commons.

Iván L. Munuera talks about blood transfusion. Blood transfusion carries a notion of “body” far from the definition of a discrete and autonomous being. It states an environmental recomposition that pushes for interdependent, interconnected, and not zipped-up embodiments.

In their work, P. Staff interrogates the often uncomfortable interdependency and extraction of bio-commodities, both human and other, between body and institution, liquid, and solid. The material dimension of collective life becomes the site where structural violence, registers of harm, and the corrosive effects of acid, blood, and hormones can be explored and enacted.

Himali Singh Soin explores the elements of the earth, their reverberations in the body and the inter-scalar exchanges between them. Here she tells the story of a search for a lost bla, a subtle life force that runs through the world-body that has lost itself amid the crisis of the present moment.

Previous episodes
Episode 1: Menstruating. With a sound piece by artist Cecilia Vicuña
Menstrual fluids are carriers of taboos, gender stereotypes, social behaviors, notions of life and death, purity and uncleanliness. Their symbolism connects bodies to the moon, mountains, rivers, and goddesses. Menstruating involves both synchronicity with the cosmos and forms of earthly solidarity.

Episode 2: Decomposing. With two sound pieces by artists Tuo Wang, and Daisy Bisenieks and Royce Ng (Zheng Mahler)
Organic bodies break down and decay, aided by other bodies. As microorganisms feed on dead plants and animal and human remains, they deconstruct intricate life forms into their simplest components. Water, carbon dioxide, and nutrients are building blocks of earth beings and their socionatural collectives. We are in a continuous process of body breaking and making.

Episode 3: Flushing. With two sound pieces by artists Hao Pei Chu and Liam Young
Pipes connect our bodies with larger ecosystems. They help dispose of and relocate sewage while sustaining the image of its disappearance. Pipes enact the apparent separation between humans and their waste. They are part of the physiological trait, for they help us get rid of that which we no longer want to recognize as ours.

Forthcoming episodes
Episode 7: Clogging. With two independent sound pieces by artists Vera Frenkel and Ibiye Camp
Release date: June 28, 2021
Material power resides in the containment and control of flows. Far from avoiding friction, it is precisely the disruptions and systemic imbalances in flow itself that keeps the system running and allows for uneven forms of distribution, accumulation, and advantage. Latency, clogging, inertia, and slowness are instruments to both enact and challenge power.

Episode 8: Discharging. With a sound piece by researchers and designers Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Marco Ferrari, and Elise Hunchuck (in collaboration)
Release date: June 28, 2021
Rainmaking is a long-lasting human dream. Triggering water precipitation in air to combat water scarcity, drought, and global warming has driven spiritual cultural practices, scientific studies, and territorial conflicts. It has materialized in countless ceremonies, rituals, and other technologically enabled practices. Human ambition to tame the environment drives the proliferation of contemporary cloud seeding programs, which speaks about the political, ecological, and social consequences of the extraction of what is common.

Episode 9. Lubricating. With two sound pieces by artists Tabita Rezaire and Yin Aiwen
Release date: June 28, 2021
Smoothness drives contemporary technological regimes: frictionless experiences, immediate gratifications, a promise of a world of flows without disruption. We are enchanted by a slippery seamlessness, mediated by sleek surfaces. A visual order accommodating the idea that the world, and capital, run painlessly. An order enabling control over collective imaginations, bodies, and natural resources. One that oils the relentless infrastructural libido.