an exploration of the concept of “floating worlds”
Designers Céline Pelcé (FR) and Aliki van der Kruijs (NL) are currently researching the water ways in Japan during a traveling residency. They aim to use textiles, food and words as a medium to support interactive local encounters and explore ways to behave like water, embracing movement and flexibility towards contemporary issues.
Expanding the research and using different tools, a series of encounters with locals, creatives, farmers, botanists and natural resources create a moment around the idea of water as a metaphorical foundation.
By working together with the locals, Aliki and Céline grow a sensorial archive of experiences to explore a multitude of relationship with water. This website functions as a subjective diary to share these encounters.
Ukiha, Fukuoka prefect
Mizudo
Mizu people
Hands of water
Reality is like a dream
Utakata
You shouldn’t think too much about the rules, otherwise you’ll miss the air
The water is saturated in the blood
internalized, not an object, it’s in you.
Put the cut herbs clockwise in a bowl, with a slice of turnip in the back (the moon) and a slice of radish in the front (the sun).
You’re now an adult.
Genta 8824
in the field of stars
Wheat grain contains 13% water.
Noodle also contains 13% of water.
Some water gets in, some water dries out, humidity stays the same.
Eating noodles is like eating water. Fluid as a river streaming down the throat, noodle revolution is starting.
Salt
Salt, wheat and water.
Salt, magnesium, and soy beans
Salt in the water of our body.
Sand
In the clay
In the air, coming from the rivers of China
Bringing odd numbers into a too regular structure.
葭始生
First reeds sprouts
The earth trembled and water became black. As the underground was talking, expressing years and decades of stirring, of mixing; what circulated in clear channels before, parallel, all of a sudden met, chaos. The channel diameter probably changed. Millions of micro organisms became free in a bath, spreading all over the place, darkening the water and the skin, embedded in all the cracks, veins, pores, fibers.
霜止出苗
Last frost, rice seedlings grow
A Full moon rises, and the tides are now very high and very low.
Imai draws its salt from the tides of full and new moons. Bigger tides, more movement: more minerals and nutrients. Imai keeps an eye on the sea. After Fukushima, he thought his salt production was finished. He began to observe the sea, the beach, the plants, the sky, every day. Every day, scrutinizing a changing detail, a sign of disturbance, pollution or toxicity. Water from Fukushima was released into the sea earlier this year. Still no anomaly in sight. One day he'll have to stop, when the state of the marine ecosystem is too critical. But for now, he takes his notes, he watches, he observes, he harvests water, evaporates it, collects its salt.