![\"Nina-Vroemen_INVEST\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Olszanowski_Nina-Vroemen_INVEST_01.jpg\")
Nina Vroemen<\/strong>
MICRO-WAVE<\/em>, from the series IN-VEST<\/em>, 2022.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe must critically harness the toxicity and encourage the disobedience of water,\u201d Vroemen tells me as they dip a paintbrush into iodine.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Nina Vroemen, interview with author, 27 March 2023.<\/span> Vroemen\u2019s answer irrigates toward speculative ends from theorists Donna Haraway and Astrida Neimanis and their feminist strategies for living with environmental catastrophe\u200a\u2014\u200aa way of staying with the trouble. Both the title and the thesis of Haraway\u2019s book, \u201cstaying with the trouble\u201d is a material practice of and commitment to being attuned to the present moment, recognizing that we are entangled in a messy multitude with every organism and thing on earth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We are all in it together\u200a\u2014\u200athough never in the same waters\u200a\u2014\u200ashit and all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n While on one hand, Vroemen, Michaud, and Ely all engage in a kind of ecofeminist art, a critical response to how our relationship with the environment has been co-opted by neoliberal capitalism. It is their desire \u201cto make trouble, to stir up potent response[s] to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene<\/em> (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 1.<\/span> that situates them within Neimanis\u2019s hydrofeminism, a critical materialist theory rooted in ecofeminism and social justice, that foregrounds our polymorphous connection with water.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Astrida Neimanis, \u201cHydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water,\u201d in Undutiful Daughters: New Directions in Feminist Thought and Practice<\/em>, eds. Henriette Gunkel, Chrystanthi Niglianni, and Fanny S\u00f6derb\u00e4ck (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 85\u200a\u201399.<\/span> Similarly, Haraway proposes \u201cmaking oddkin\u201d: a feminist framework that upends the promise of health and what we may consider possible in our contaminated present. As a reframing of anthropocentric and nuclear family structures, making oddkin signals that we (human and non-human entities) \u201crequire each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles. We become-with each other or not at all.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Haraway, Staying with the Trouble<\/em>,4.<\/span> Our world is made through this generative kinship\u200a\u2014\u200anot just through human relations but through the messy and contradictory ways we are in contact with other materials and entities that make us who we are. These two feminist lineages\u200a\u2014\u200ahydrofeminism and making oddkin\u200a\u2014\u200aare evoked in Vroemen, Michaud, and Ely\u2019s work conceptually, politically, and aesthetically, as they dress up and play different characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ely\u2019s Murray River Punch<\/em> (1980\u20132014), collaborations with the river are conceptually and literally a hot compost pile of making generative oddkin. Lampooning a supermarket cooking demo, replete with a maidenly outfit and a beaming smile to the hum of Muzak, Ely prepares an elaborate drink in front of an audience, in a feminist critique of industrial and capitalist environmental degradation. Recognizing her own inadvertent complicity as a white settler, she combines a story of racist erasure of the Murray River\u2019s extensive Indigenous history, the ecological devastation of colonization, and subsequent industrial farming and over-irrigation7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Jessica K. Weir, Murray River Country: An Ecological Dialogue with Traditional Owners<\/em> (Acton, Australian Capital Territory: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2009).<\/span> with stirring and naming the drink\u2019s potent ingredients\u200a\u2014\u200amaterials found in and around the river (agricultural chemicals, phosphate compound fertilizer, feces, and so on)\u200a\u2014\u200aand then pouring the brown sludge into clear cups to serve to the audience. The performance makes visible hydro-logics, a hydrofeminist argument asserting that by drinking water, we connect with species we may never want to, as well as all the components that scaffold and contain water and make it drinkable.8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Neimanis, \u201cHydrofeminism,\u201d 98.<\/span> Each subsequent iteration of Murray River Punch<\/em> involves an updating of the number of POPs and toxins found in the watershed. Everything that goes into our water eventually goes into us. By polluting our waters, we pollute every body.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Murray River Punch<\/em> was first performed in 1980. In 1981, it was re-performed at a local mall. When it was reprised in 2010, it was renamed Murray River Punch: The C20th<\/em>. This time, the \u201crecipe\u201d was served as a sticky paste to showcase the withering of the river after a ten-year drought. In 2014, it became Murray River Punch: The Soup<\/em>, with fourteen ingredients and several garnishes, performed with Emma Price at Brunswick Street Gallery in Melbourne. In this iteration, Ely\u2019s sartorial choice was less that of a stereotypical housewife and more that of a wild scientist: white apron, oversized pink glasses, and opulent jewelry. During each performance, recipes were handed out which have been archived on Ely\u2019s website for anyone to re-create by making oddkin with trash. As was evident in Ely\u2019s reliance on consumption to track and reflect on the changing status of a river, the drinking of water is highlighted as a political act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Vroemen\u2019s speculative soft-sculpture project IN-VEST<\/em> (2022\u2013\u200aongoing), a series of garments filled with lead-contaminated water become shields against the threat of radiation. As a response to the undrinkable contaminated water in their studio building, Vroemen extends previous strategies and interests by presenting these wearables in a series of short videos that mimic commercials with hyperbolic and dubious scientific-sounding claims. The tagline, \u201cPrepare to be safe with IN-VEST<\/em>. There\u2019s no investment too great for peace of mind,\u201d like the work, playfully repurposes and makes visible the toxic threats to our lives\u200a\u2014\u200ain this case, consumer culture. IN-VEST<\/em> is a play on \u201cinvest,\u201d a fundamental term for capitalism, which is dependent on the very markets that thrive on catastrophe. IN-VEST<\/em> is also the inversion of vest in<\/em>, which means to come into possession of, especially, power or property. Vroemen\u2019s clever intertwining of the idea of contamination with capitalism and how different interests are tied up in this collective project of destroying the habitable earth demonstrates its absurdity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lead-water wearables presented in IN-VEST<\/em> are made with plastic recycled from old shower curtains, furniture covers, plastic bags, and other materials. Vroemen uses an impulse sealer that melts the plastic into watertight pouches that are fashioned into different garments. IN-VEST<\/em>\u2019s Water-Wallet<\/em> has flecks of gold in its lead-water, so it can hold its value in case of any market crashes. IN-VEST<\/em>\u2019s MICRO-WAVE<\/em>, a bonnet that protects the brain against radiation and any toxic high-speed collision, looks like it could be in Juliusz Machulski\u2019s Sexmission <\/em>(1984), a Polish science fiction comedy that is a scathing political satire in which two scientists wake up in a future in which they are the only two males left. Evoking a future reality, the lead-water garments are then activated in water\u2009% holding<\/em> (2022), a fourteen-minute video that Vroemen choreographed with music composed by Ro(b)\/\/ert Lundberg, an environmental lawyer, artist, and scholar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The economic exchange of power and property underpins concrete commercial centres, which were the sites where Michaud intentionally offered free locally sourced water to the public across Qu\u00e9bec and Ontario in her hydrofeminist performance Taste the $ource<\/em> (2006\u200a\u2013\u200aongoing). Michaud, appearing costumed as a freshwater mermaid, illuminated by a long celestial-blue wig and a matching iridescent body, stands at a long table decorated with bones, rocks, and burlap, set up like a sample demo booth in downtown Montr\u00e9al. Her \u201csamples\u201d are examples of freshwater borrowed from a series of Canadian rivers and waterways. Using all aspects of the \u201cpackaging,\u201d Michaud conveys the characteristics of the water and its sources: place names, rocks, or plant matter she harvested. It is vital for Michaud that these samples carry enough of themselves to share their respective stories and enable thinking, caring, movement, and growth between us and the water systems. For her, water becomes an intimate point of connection, and explicitly acts as a communicator between bodies.9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Ibid., 87.<\/span> To complete the performance of the salesperson is a handmade bilingual sign proclaiming \u201cWhile supplies last.\u201d Like Vroemen and Ely, Michaud repurposes the vocabulary and spectacle of consumer culture. \u201cWhile supplies last\u201d is a play on advertising parlance as well as an acknowledgement that clean water is a scarce and unevenly distributed resource, which Neimanis argues is because of the knotty way we live as bodies of water with other watery bodies.10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology<\/em> (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 170.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Michaud laughs at how easily commodification and privilege can play out. She tells me her water stand became a gelato shop for some people; they wanted to try a bit of this or that water.11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Emily Rose Michaud, interview with author, 23 April 2023.<\/span> But some did not trust the water\u2019s drinkability, precisely because toxicity in water is often invisible and because, in consumer culture, packaging is everything. Who brings us (to) water in these troubling times? A mermaid, a speculative feminist, an ontological oddkin, as part-human part-mythical creature, that takes on a sundry of meanings contingent upon geographic location. In this case, Michaud\u2019s transmutation into a fabled water spirit is a conduit for the scarcity and commodification of clean water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vroemen\u2019s work, by making oddkin with uranium, lead, iodine, and water, irrigates what they call \u201ca potential antidote for a livable future.\u201d12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Nina Vroemen, interview with author, 27 March 2023.<\/span> A livable future, supported by hydrofeminism and new kinship structures, like the works considered in this essay, does not take an antithetical stance to the system it critiques. Being \u201canti\u201d something, Haraway argues, often means being complicit in the system you oppose.13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 13 <\/a> - Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature<\/em> (New York: Routledge, 1991), 176.<\/span> When an oppositional stand is taken, the immutable authority and power of the system being contested is reinforced. In this respect, feminist practice plays a crucial role in the argument that systems of power are more fluid and permeable than they purport to be. Ely, Michaud, and Vroemen do not deny the power of capitalism and consumer culture under the Anthropocene but engage with-in them in relational and playful ways to reconfigure how to live. They do so by making claims that counter anthropocentrism, highlighting how humans and waterways are inseparable, and asking us to consider the intimacy of that relationship. Ely and Michaud beckon the audience to physically ingest water, whereas Vroemen wants us to adorn our bodies with water before eventually ingesting it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The extent of water pollution is often misunderstood. It is a slow violence that is usually comprehensible only once it is too late. By collaborating with waterways, these three artists not only \u201cstay with the trouble\u201d but also make us a witness to its tributaries. They remind us that we are not superior to other species. In tasting water, that becomes clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Polish writer, artist, and professor living in Montr\u00e9al, Magdalena Olszanowski received her PhD in Communication Studies from Concordia University, where she is now part-time faculty. She also teaches at Dawson College. Her work is concerned with censorship, the maternal, feminist art, and the early web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"Bonita-Ely_Soup-mud-sculp\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Olszanowski_Bonita-Ely_Soupmudsculp-C-FLAT.jpg\")
Bonita Ely<\/strong>
Murray River Punch: The Soup<\/em>, performance view, Brinswick Street Gallery, Melbourne, 2014.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Milani Gallery, Brisbane<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Nina-Vroemen_INVEST\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Olszanowski_Nina-Vroemen_INVEST_03.jpg\")
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IN-VEST<\/em>, 2022.
Photos: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Emily-Rose-Michaud_Taste-The-Source\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Olszanowski_Emily-Rose-Michaud_TasteTheSource_6.jpg\")
Emily Rose Michaud<\/strong>
Taste the $ource (while supplies last)<\/em>, 2006-2014, performance view, Ottawa, 2014.
Photo: Laura Margita, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Emily-Rose-Michaud_Taste-The-Source\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_Olszanowski_Emily-Rose-Michaud_TasteTheSource_3.jpg\")
Emily Rose Michaud<\/strong>
Taste the $ource (while supplies last)<\/em>, 2006-2014, performance view, Ottawa, 2014.
Photo: Laura Margita, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n