Rumbling waters


RUMBLING WATERS is a video presenting the slow motion capture of three earthenware jars filled with water, exploding one after the other under the impact of a revolver bullet.

RUMBLING WATERS was created in autumn 2022 and follows the artist’s long-standing interest in deserts and arid places around the world, more specifically in North and South America, where he has initiated several collaborations with indigenous communities.

RUMBLING WATERS is above all about a vital resource, water, the prerequisite for all forms of desert life. In the USA, water supplied by the mountains and the rivers is an integral part of the culture and spirituality of the Fort Mojave Native American tribe, located between the states of California and Nevada, along the Colorado river.  In this region, where water was once seized with revolvers, its commercialization is still the object of intense covetousness today. The appropriation of a resource for its exploitation is thus opposed by a different relationship to the land, an integral part of indigenous cultures.

In a radical gesture, RUMBLING WATERS evokes the intrinsic link between a resource and the emancipation of a culture, or conversely, its disappearance. In the video, the jars are broken but remain upright despite the impact of the shock, suggesting a form of resistance. The last jar, on the other hand, breaks and falls. Filmed in slow motion and presented in a loop, this video insists on the idea of an unspeakable aggression, barely perceptible but nonetheless violent. Its looped presentation seems to suggest that history is imperturbably repeating itself.