Water-Wise, River Breath: Reframing design鈥檚 role with water
Two river watersheds nearly 8,000 kilometres apart provide a lens from which to explore a nuanced human relationship to water. The glacier-fed North Saskatchewan River 铿俹ws through Alberta and Saskatchewan before draining into the Hudson Bay. In contrast, Amazonia, the river basin of the Amazon River in South America, is known for its considerable biodiversity and recently, a rapidly diminishing tropical rainforest. It has served as a stage where the di铿�ering values of water as a 鈥渞esource鈥� versus water as a 鈥渟ource of life鈥� have been playing out since the 1940s. How do we interpret the right to water? And, do rivers have rights?
Our use of, and respect for water is negotiated by approach. Architect Wanda DallaCosta and artist Lana Whiskeyjack, both from the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in the North Saskatchewan Watershed, call attention to the plurality of voices missing in contemporary water discourse. The visual and aural narratives they have co-curated reveal an interplay between abundance, scarcity and resilience.
A decade ago, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of the Kichwa Indigenous people of Sarayaku in the southern part of the Ecuadorian Amazon, to uphold their right to life. Resulting from a series of legal battles when the State of Ecuador granted an Argentinian oil company access to the ancestral territory, the story continues to play out today. The 铿乴m Forest Law by Swiss artist Ursula Biemann reveals an alternative narrative to the one of resource extraction. Layering river, forest and natural rights into one, the question of 鈥渨ater鈥� elicits the question, do rivers have rights? Ecuadorian architect Ana Mar铆a Dur谩n Calisto further reveals a dehumanizing e铿�ect of water under the lens of nature as a 鈥渞esource鈥� by exploring three ecologies of Amazonia settlement from the deep past to the carbon form of the future.
Artist Tanya Harnett, a member of the Carry-The-Kettle First Nations in Saskatchewan and Canadian artist Marlene Creates feature works documenting the rivers in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
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Two river watersheds nearly 8,000 kilometres apart provide a lens from which to explore a nuanced human relationship to water. The glacier-fed North Saskatchewan River 铿俹ws through Alberta and Saskatchewan before draining into the Hudson Bay. In contrast, Amazonia, the river basin of the Amazon River in South America, is known for its considerable biodiversity and recently, a rapidly diminishing tropical rainforest. It has served as a stage where the di铿�ering values of water as a 鈥渞esource鈥� versus water as a 鈥渟ource of life鈥� have been playing out since the 1940s. How do we interpret the right to water? And, do rivers have rights?
Our use of, and respect for water is negotiated by approach. Architect Wanda DallaCosta and artist Lana Whiskeyjack, both from the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in the North Saskatchewan Watershed, call attention to the plurality of voices missing in contemporary water discourse. The visual and aural narratives they have co-curated reveal an interplay between abundance, scarcity and resilience.
A decade ago, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of the Kichwa Indigenous people of Sarayaku in the southern part of the Ecuadorian Amazon, to uphold their right to life. Resulting from a series of legal battles when the State of Ecuador granted an Argentinian oil company access to the ancestral territory, the story continues to play out today. The 铿乴m Forest Law by Swiss artist Ursula Biemann reveals an alternative narrative to the one of resource extraction. Layering river, forest and natural rights into one, the question of 鈥渨ater鈥� elicits the question, do rivers have rights? Ecuadorian architect Ana Mar铆a Dur谩n Calisto further reveals a dehumanizing e铿�ect of water under the lens of nature as a 鈥渞esource鈥� by exploring three ecologies of Amazonia settlement from the deep past to the carbon form of the future.
Artist Tanya Harnett, a member of the Carry-The-Kettle First Nations in Saskatchewan and Canadian artist Marlene Creates feature works documenting the rivers in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
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