What the Water Knows of Us – Screening & Talk with Abraham Tettey, Ghana
Intervention mit dem Kurator ABRAHAM TETTEY aus Ghana (Stipendiat in dem Programm Braunschweig Projects der HBK Braunschweig)
What does it mean to live with water, to depend on it, be shaped by it, fear it or owe it something?
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.