Water Rituals is an installation and a performance that consists of Iiris-Lilja Kuosmanen’s photographs and video work and Anniina Lehtinen’s soundscape and concert. It is a meditative depiction of the changes in the environment and the power of water – the way in which water takes over areas and creates something new. We have examined water as a life-sustaining element and the rituals and traditions created around it. We look for ways to present the different states of water. The visual content was shot in places
that people have changed in an environmentally unsustainable manner as well as in sacred places where people have even worshipped water.
The works lead viewers to a time where water takes over areas after humans. The photos show the signs of environmental destruction, which provides a sharp contrast to the natural world of the video work. The work depicts how these two extremes shape each other. The soundscape made by Anniina Lehtinen takes one to a water-filled ethereal world where the water comes from deep within the earth and reminds one of an ancient time when people would get together to perform rituals around this sacred element.
The Water Rituals performance combines abstract video works to a concert which combines keyboard to reverb pedals and water sounds into an ambient soundscape. It combines a concert composed and played by Anniina Lehtinen to an abstract video work of Iiris-Lilja Kuosmanen. The concert lasts approximatively 45 minutes to an hour and the music is atmospheric and emotional piano music combined with effect pedals and tape recordings of the sounds of the sea. The videos have been shot mostly in Finland and they show the poetic power of the water in a post-humanistic world. The public falls into a meditative, timeless space during the performance.
The work is multisensory and tells about the ongoing effects of the climate change on the seas. Photographs have also been shot in places of the great tides in Normandy. Tides reveal underwater worlds people have no part in.
