What might it mean to truly embrace the elemental conditions of life here on earth? For this summer’s ‘water’ exhibition, we explore one such approach in the visionary work of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, presenting their 2017 film, Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure (for the vitrine, as a trailer; screenings to follow). Navigating H2O’s pragmatics, prophetics, and sensual power, Sprinkle, Stephens, and their dog Butch hit the road in California, touring treatment plants and nature reserves; meeting with experts and aficionados; visiting pools, deserts, portals. Narrated from the earth’s perspective (voiced by Sandy Stone), theirs is a choral journey where personal touchpoints commingle fluidly with voices of urgency and insight (Donna Haraway, Penny Slinger), underscoring how water weaves through our lives as not just object or essence, but a consciousness of its own.

Selected by Paul B. Preciado for documenta 14, Water Makes Us Wet is a spirited evocation of water’s many delights and forms, through a potent combination of criticality, humor, and personal feeling. In the years since the film’s creation, water has become all the more prevalent as subject and method in conversations around climate crisis, locality (“Thinking with Mediterraneans”), liquid capital, ‘hydrofeminist futures’. In Water Makes Us Wet, and their ongoing work, Sprinkle and Stephens bring these immense currents to a playfully human scale, by taking up the active position of ‘lovers’. Zooming out from their close-up, we <3 H2O reflects on relationships to water and its discourses; in the vitrine context, inviting passersby to consider pathways of awareness and connection, of rooting in nature and each other, with curiosity, passion, and joy.

Film screening (EN) | Friday 14 June, 8 PM | Kino Toni, Förrlibuckstrasse 109, Zurich 8005

For any inquiries, please contact kompassspace@gmail.com / @kompassspace