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COMMON LAKES
in collaboration with Gili Lavy


COMMON LAKES | DUAL CHANNEL AUDIO-VIDEO INSTALLATION | 2021/22

3D ART: KAKIA KONSTANTINAKI | TEXT: STELLA SIDELI | COMPOSING & SOUND DESIGN: JACOPO SALVATORI

THIS PROJECT IS KINDLY SUPPORTED BY RESPONSA FOUNDATION

WITH SPECIAL SPECIAL THANKS TO; ARTIS, TBA-21 ACADEMY, AND OCEAN-ARCHIVE




Common Lakes is an interdisciplinary body of work comprising a dual-channel video installation and a separate, choral sound piece.
The work explores water as an archive, holding memory of lived experiences and shifts in environment and histories. In particular, through a focus on liquid borders, or barriers at sea, it wonders in what way water might incorporate stories of collective displacement in areas affected by socio-political and historical tensions, such as the Mediterranean. Visually and aurally speculating on what liquid borders might look like or what might be born out of their presence in the underwater landscape, Common Lakes reflects on how water is able to contain borders and what lies on each separated side. In the meantime, a pack of whales, one of the most ancient and sacred mammals in symbiosis with the cosmos from the depths of the ocean, guides our aural experience in this journey through various points in the Mediterranean: its oldest oceanic crust and the Israel/Gaza sea barrier, the Strait of Sicily or the soon to be built Greece sea barrier. Immersed in this world created by sound and video works, we are left to experience a moment in which perhaps something unknown has just happened or it’s about to happen: the underwater world thus becomes an undefined space, carrying a metaphorical potential for new meanings or possibilities.


Introduction text written by Stella Sideli to “Common Lakes”


Whales are sacred, majestic marine mammals.

They have a mysterious Sagan-like connection with the earth, the sun and all the cosmos.

They have the largest heart in the animal kingdom.

A 180 kg weighing giant heart, only beating twice per minute.

When we approach the body of work Common Lakes for the first time, we find ourselves quietly exploring the viscera of the ocean, almost enchanted by this immensely slow, deep sounding, huge beating heart that we can’t really hear but which somehow articulates the journey.

Both in the video work and in the sound work, we follow a pod of humpback whales underwater, inhabiting the Mediterranean Sea. Humpback whales are usually found in the Atlantic Ocean rather than in the Mediterranean; however, it is known that it’s all one ocean. As a matter of fact, the Mediterranean Sea receives a continuous inflow of surface water from the Atlantic Ocean. After passing through the Strait of Gibraltar, the main body of the incoming surface water flows eastward along the north coast of Africa. This current is the most constant component of the circulation of the Mediterranean. It is most powerful in summer, when evaporation in the Mediterranean is at a maximum. This inflow of Atlantic water loses its strength as it proceeds eastward, but it is still recognisable as a surface movement in the Sicilian Channel and even off the Levant Coast. A small amount of water also enters the Mediterranean from the Black Sea as a surface current through the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles.