Vatnandi
2024 I RESEARCH BASED DESIGN WORK
Shown at Glitský - Iceland University of the Arts gratuation exhibition at the Reykjavík art museum, hafnarhús & Hvísluleikur/silent universe seeks echo at HERMA
If the Icelandic language recognized the lifeness of nature, would it affect the way we interact with our environment? The work explores the Icelandic language in a new light, as most western languages both objectify nature and speak of it as dead. The lifeforce of the water, one of Iceland's most violated natural sources, is explored and a new way of speaking is planted. Special watering tools contribute in reforming nouns into verbs, freeing the water from human definition, bound to a single word. A verb recognizes nature's liveness and the possibility that at any moment the water can change its behavior.
The project explores the way humans talk about the natural environment. A theory from the linguist Edward Sapir claims that the way we see, hear, or experience the world around us is highly impacted by the way our society or community has interpreted the outside world over time. In this way, sense patterns are created within communities and one becomes more receptive to certain choices of interpretation. And with western languages having developed to be very human centric, often objectifying the living environment and speaking of it as dead, according to Edwards theory this must influence the relationship we have with it. Contrasting this, many indigenous languages reflect a reciprocal relationship between humans and the living environment, one example depicting this is that those languages often hold a significantly more amount of verbs than nouns compared to western languages. And this is because you can only speak of something as a noun if it is dead, it objectifies the subject, while verbs account for a subject's lifeness. Aiming to integrate language patterns that reflect a deep connection with nature into the Icelandic language, the designer's mother tongue. It focuses on the spirit of water, which holds great significance in Iceland, a country surrounded by the sea and characterized by abundant snow, rain, glaciers, rivers, lakes, and waterfalls. Water in Iceland is heavily impacted by human activities such as hydropower plants and salmon farming, and the nation's glaciers are predicted to melt completely within 200 years.
The work consists of six tools designed for transforming the nouns: alda (a wave), stöðuvatn (a lake), foss (a waterfall), lækur (a stream), ský (a cloud) and pollur (a puddle), into the verbs aldandi, stöðuvatnandi, fossandi, lækjandi, skýandi og pollandi, to put this in perspective this could be something like the word “wave” in english transforming into “waving”. The new verbs ar put forvard in present participle where in Icelandic they all have the ending -andi with the word “andi” meaning spirit in Icelandic, underlining the lifeness of the water. Each tool represents one word or one behavior. For example a tool representing the word "stream" imitates the water flowing in a narrow stream from side to side. The nouns are presented as seeds (at first in rows referring to traditional lines of agricultural fields). The seeds are made of unburnt clay, with the nouns laser engraved into the material. Because they are made of unburnt clay the words gradually dissolve when they come into contact with water, reflecting the disappearance of objectifying speech. With proper care and frequent watering, they eventually disappear, leaving behind the verbs that the watering tools represent. Change takes time, and effort and so I designed the tools with these small vessels that can only hold a very small amount of water at a time and therefore require that you engage with them again and again.