What the Water Knows of Us

‚What the Water Knows of‘ Us is an inquiry into what it means to live in continuous relation with water and how human presence and action are inscribed in and reflected through it.

Taking the Oker as its local threshold, the gathering moves between Western ecological thought in its varied forms and pan-African and diasporic water traditions, held in relation through the figure of Mami Wata (Mother Water), a shifting presence in West African and Afro-diasporic cosmologies through which water is understood as powerful, ambivalent and alive.

The intervention opens with a screening of Lady in the Water – a documentary by Tolulope Itegboje and Bolaji Kekere-Ekun, tracing how Mami Wata circulates through Lagos and how people live in relation to water through everyday practices, beliefs and encounters.

This question of relation extends into a situated conversation about the Oker River: its stories, the responsibilities it holds for those who live alongside it and the forms of relation it demands.

ABRAHAM TETTEY ist Stipendiat des künstlerischen Residenzprogramms Braunschweig Projects der HBK Braunschweig und des Landes Niedersachsen.