During the Soviet period, many rivers were reshaped to support heavy industry — straightened, dammed, and controlled to serve factories, agriculture, and power plants, as well as cities and households. Today, the same waters are absorbing and carrying the consequences of war. Bombings and destruction, as well the abandonment of critical infrastructure due to proximity to the frontline, unbalance and bring ecosystems to their tipping points. Toxic substances, including heavy metals, sink into the riverbeds or flow throughout river systems, leaving millions without drinking water, and contaminating the agricultural lands of Ukraine’s southern regions, threatening global food security. Some pollutants might remain out of sight, but their long-term impact on ecosystems and communities living along the rivers and beyond is unknown.
In Heavy Waters, visual language informed by folklore, scientific research, and ecological documentation is combined with the affective and emotional capacities of sound and composition, transporting the voices of rivers, bodies of water, sediments, and the landscapes they shape and feed. Waters hold more than just physical matter. They carry memory — including trauma and loss — that doesn’t disappear but settles beneath the surface. Like buried memories, these sediments may shape the future in ways we cannot yet fully see or understand.
Commissioned and co-produced by ∄ and CTM Festival with support from Goethe-Institut’s Co-production Fund.