tirta-liquidity
Water, Its Present, Its Future:
A Look Back at "Liquidity, Inc." by Hito Steyerl | Paper by Savitri Sastrawan
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2014
how can we ever not live with water?
climate change currents
clean water access
In the Balinese Hindu, tirta and water are important aspects, therefore you are cleansed by it throughout your life.
it also becomes another term that I did not think of finding it at: the business language
liquidity
refers to “the state of owning things of value that can easily be exchanged for cash”
a bizarre video [art]
“Liquidity, Inc.” by Hito Steyerl
It was inspired by the 2008 recession where we get to follow the journey of a jobless finance worker named Jacob Wood who decided to make his hobby a career: mixed martial arts. The video art followed Bruce Lee’s statement to “be shapeless, formless, like water” therefore arriving at “liquidity” as “fluid” to talk about everything related to it, namely: the weather, water, circulations, information, assets. - From Esther Schipper
you watch it lying on a wave-like ramp, therefore you are in the waves of the liquid when watching it
Personal encounter with the artworks
2015 - Stockholm, Sweden ---- 2019 - Singapore
the experience grew to be seen and felt differently
touched by water
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It got me thinking of water
What is there to learn from “Liquidity, Inc.” about water’s present and future?
What kind of “liquidity'' should we consider as our way of living on this earth?
What could be the relation to the current climate change, water scarcity, and water as part of the Balinese Hindu tirta belief?
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Climate Change; Water Scarcity
Paula Anca Farca (from Make Waves: Water in Contemporary Literature and Film) described,
“we associate water with life itself.....our history on Earth has been a history of and with water....water is irreplaceable....priceless”....“a cultural icon.....symbolic associations....purification and regeneration powers....life, wisdom, fertility, purity, and even death”
today's additional
“a new layer of environmental issues”
including climate change and water scarcity.
Thus, Hito Steyerl and "Liquidity, Inc."
...."critical cohabitation" of fiction and documentary - From Michael Blum Hyperallergic
"Using montage as its idiom….Steyerl consolidates her position as a playful, connected, and urgent artist....[Liquidity, Inc. as] about water as a company, and the company as a movement in water that infiltrates, washing across all bodies" - From Tensta Konsthall
“networked space is itself a medium....archives all previous forms of media....in this fluid media space, images and sounds morph across different bodies and carriers.....but this space is also a sphere of liquidity, of looming rainstorms and unstable climate” - From Hito Steyerl Too Much World
"Steyerl senses through her media mix that we operate in a society that fetishises liquid motion" - From Sebastian Choe Academia.edu
“Her message: Cultural and climatic events wash over us, and we have no choice but to be fluid and adapt” - From Cate McQuaid The Boston Globe
Photo from Artforum
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Urban belief; Tirta belief
“Liquidity, Inc.” suggests an urban belief
a way of seeing towards a belief that existed in our globalisation
Tirta belief, translated from Ngurah Suryawan (Saru Gremeng Bali book),
"water is very important in the religious and cultural structure of the [Balinese] society….Subak is one of the important elements of Bali’s agriculture civilisation….a medium for the ritual and cosmology practice of Agama Tirta (water belief)....Sekaa Subak became the important organisation to make sure the water civilisation works towards the society’s farmers’ lands….besides that water is the heart of living, it becomes its own philosophy….Batur, with its Mount Batur, Batur Lake and temple Pura Ulun Danu Batur has its main rituals of worships, including towards water."
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water becomes a cultural icon and possesses purification
Urban belief artworks related to Bali existed in the exhibition “Spiritualitas Urban” (Urban Spirituality) taking place at Sudakara Art Space, Sanur, Bali in 2015
Translated from Wayan Seriyoga Parta... through the artworks’ explorations in this exhibition, it seems to show how the art world is “questioning” itself in its modernity constellation, along with “differentiating” itself from the moral and science.
first picture
Wayan Upadana’s “Memoscape”
a resin based sculpture
upon a LED TV showing moving waters on the shores
audio playing on the background.
Parta explained,
"…to Wayan Upadana the growing technology development has the potential to echo the transcendence experience…the monitor showing waves from the South West of Bali, illuminating the transparent mountain shaped sculpture…expressing a personal experience, about a spirituality appreciation."
second picture
Wayan Upadana's similar installation involving sculptures of human bodies, “Manusia Imaji Air dan Cahaya” (2018),
“light-dependent being”
shifted from indulging sunshine to our sophisticated gadgets
Uluwatu, Bukit Pecatu
shifted from being a sacred area
including for spiritual cleansing
to an over-developed touristic gaze
Upadana expressed,
"In this artwork I want the audience to feel again nature's presence through television as the medium, to bring emotions to the table and how 'memories' stimulate feelings towards those who view it."
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Dark Ecology; Blue Media Studies
As Timothy Morton (in All Art is Ecological) explained Dark Ecology,
"…My approach to ecological thought can be characterised as something I call ‘dark ecology’. Dark ecology doesn’t mean the absolute absence of light….[it’s] the dimness. Light as such isn’t directly present, you can’t pin it down and you can’t fully illuminate it: what illuminates the illuminator?..
These artworks are
urban water beliefs.
Bogna M. Koinor on blue media studies stated,
"Blue media lie between the dynamic process of decomposition and extinction, as well as the invisibility of history, be it migration and slavery, both entangled with the narrative of the Anthropocene. The invisibility of environmental change, an event that plays out through inhuman (although human-induced) temporality, alike poses a representational challenge."
"While singular natural disasters can produce news events, the pollution of the oceans cannot become a media event because of its ongoing, gradual nature. Is it therefore not surprising that visual culture—from mainstream disaster movies to activist artworks—has taken it upon itself to fill this vacant space of awe…"
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“I am liquidity incorporated... I run through your veins, your eyes, your touchscreens and portfolios.”
literal explanation
this liquid and fluid media
reflected by the water moving image,
that it is somehow an incorporation.
“Liquidity, Inc.” is
very heavily collaged,
montaged of moving images of data.
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the interface of Tumblr - Katsushika Hokusai’s "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" flashed in different colours and added music that I remembered vaguely
“flashing Tumblr GIFs [graphics interchange format file] of Hokusai’s iconic ‘Great Wave’”...“transitioning to a world map” - From Sebastian Choe Academia.edu
“the video swings away from [Jacob] Wood to [Hokusai’s] ‘The Great Wave of Kanagawa] on repeat and caffeinated with colour”. - From Cate McQuaid The Boston Globe
iconic artwork to become a symbolism of water into this video art
“Your feeling is affecting the weather, and you’re feeling not so great… You might be insane.”
It was “bright and fizzy, bubbling with humour, eye candy” it can be. How the “dizzying colours, quick edits, insets and animations” .... “sweet, speedy and bright”....“riding waves”...“turbulent”.... - From Cate McQuaid The Boston Globe
Video taken at Posthuman City Exhibition, NTU CCA Singapore, 2019
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2019, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore, “The Posthuman City” Exhibition
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"I lay down on a blue martial-arts mat placed before the screen and let its story flow and crash. It crashes repeatedly—like waves, like our computers, like the economy. Twenty minutes in, all three of those crashes coincide, and desktop messages begin to pop up on the screen" - From Damon Krukowski Artforum
Video taken at Posthuman City Exhibition, NTU CCA Singapore, 2019
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“lengthy rendering times…affects her editing....staring at the rendering bar.....a kind of ‘speculative editing” - From Rachel Stevens, Millenium Film Journal
“dynamic 3D body of silvery, plasmic water…set against a 2D static, blue desktop wallpaper horizon”...it's “staying afloat”...and Steyerl is “liquid herself” as she built the CGI herself.... - From Michael Blum Hyperallergic
“there is no rubble because the space-time continuum in the liquid modern world is already broken” - From Vanessa Gravenor The Seen Journal
Photo taken at Posthuman City Exhibition, NTU CCA Singapore, 2019
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...“confusing build up of liquid and water metaphors” between Jacob Wood’s story narrated and the “visual montages” including “CGI waves, water drops, texts referencing water, clouds, tsunamis, and more”...
"….comments on how the notion of the economy as a ‘natural’ ecology of water is instrumentalism throughout the cultural sphere, used, in effect, to displace and disguise the human forces at work."
- From Christina Gerhardt and Jaimey Hamilton Faris, who discussed “Liquidity, Inc.” as part of the Make Waves: Water in Contemporary Literature and Film
Video taken at Posthuman City Exhibition, NTU CCA Singapore, 2019
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There are so many ways of interpreting this artwork and every one of them seems to make sense in discussing water's various positions which affect its present and future.
“reality itself is postproducted and scripted" as "image and world are in many cases just versions of each other” although their gap allows “speculation and intense anxiety” to take place - From Hito Steyerl's Too Much World
“a virtual superstorm of clichés about liquidity” - From Damon Krukowski Artforum
“punning, metonymy, and playing shifting meanings” opens up the “dialectical tension” of “image and world” - From Michael Blum Hyperallergic
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