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About

ABOUT

STATEMENT

The “World Water Museum” installation is an interactive, constantly evolving and fluctuating project, a cross-over between different genres and offering a distinct activist message. It aims to raise the awareness of the public about the contamination and continuous depletion of the clean, drinkable water resources of our planet. It aims to sensitise visitors to the urgent need to safeguard the Earth’s precious water stores and protect it as the precious treasure it is.

Using art as its tool and utilising a variety of media and the hyper-realist genre, it attempts to showcase the grave environmental issues faced by our planet, characterising water as a “museum piece“. A “museum” without the usual scientific classification criteria and precious objects, but which deals with something priceless and does seek the contribution of science.  The safekeeping of samples of fresh water is a symbolic act, and an expression of justified environmental concerns.

This participating character of this project composes substance and condition, as in order for the samples of water to be collected, the people must participate – as for the dealing of the problem and the potential lack of water!

THE IDEA

From the dawn of humanity, rivers and lakes have been invested with mythological and spiritual significance. They have been associated with humanity’s survival and have given rise to the birth of civilisations. Until the present day, they have been a symbol of life, joy, divinity, catharsis, power, euphoria, growth. Nowadays, however, this vital relationship is in jeopardy, due to water shortages and contamination.

The “World Water Museum” (WWM) was conceived following the realisation of the enormous scale of the environmental destruction and the global repercussions of the problem. Its design began in 2009 and its implementation in 2011. On April 28, 2011, in “Technohoros”gallery in Athens, WWM organised an awareness-raising activity, communicating to the public the nature of the idea and methods of the project, and presented the first samples. Finally, the public was invited to participate in the dissemination of the idea.

The art project proposal seeks to motivate people from any part of the world, to choose a river or a lake and volunteer to send in a water sample. The water flies around the world! It is transferred along air routes from any point of the globe, all the way to the collection site and WWM installation. It also traverses digital pathways through the videos and pictures sent in by volunteers. It flies to the analysis labs. It interconnects the collection and analysis sites on the world map. It also connect s the sampling points on the world map. First and foremost, however, its symbolic dimension potently conveys an ecumenical message, uniting peoples and ideas under one common vision.

INVITATION

We call on individual citizens from around the world, but also on educational institutions, cultural organizations, scientific and environmental associations, NGOs, media, municipalities, communities, companies and more generally those who wish to send samples of water and become co-creators in the installation Museum, to send in water samples and become our associates.

THE SPACE

The installation has a ‘site-specific’ character and it is currently exhibited at DES Interactive European School in Varkiza, Attica, in a space overlooking the Aegean Sea.

Its final destination will be a specially designed space in the rocky foundations of an old traditional house on Hydra Island. Denouncing the continuing desertification of the planet and the depletion and contamination of life-giving water, samples of the rivers will be permanently kept at their final destination, the crypt of a rock, demonstrating the need to respond to the imminent threat facing our blue planet.

SCIENTIFIC SUPPORT

– For the realization of the Project acts advisory group of experts from the fields of art and science.
– The Project is under the auspices of the Greek Committee of Hydrogeology and is implemented with the participation of the Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry Department of Chemistry at the National University of Athens.
– The chemical analyzes of the samples carried out in laboratory ‘Yperaksia’ by Mr. John Kyriacou in Lamia.
– In its formal website of WWM posted scientific essays related to water.

  • The project does not carry out a factual scientific research of the condition of the world rivers or lakes water sources. Its completion will constitute a symbolic collection of the samples of water which was conducted at an unspecified place and time, so that the present space-time picture of the river waters is presented-whatever that may be- without the application of scientific criteria and selective procedures. For the above reason, the pollution levels of the area where the samples will be taken are not a prerequisite for the samples. Along with the video, the sampling coordinates and the information about the river/lake framing the voluntary participation, enrich the collection and create the euphemistically Museum.
METHODOLOGY AND IMPLEMENTATION

At the website, www.worldwatermuseum.com  you can get regular updates on the development and progress of the project and this is where the project organisers post all notifications. Each participant, after completing the corresponding form and declaring that s/he agrees to the terms of the project, can send one or more samples from different rivers or lakes

Installation

The installation consists of:
1. The collection of glass, heat-proof, conical laboratory vials, each containing 500 ml from a specific sampling procedure.
2. A big laboratory flask containing the symbolic “Earth Water” in which 100 ml of each of the samples taken is added, thus continuously increasing the level of the water.

Use of the sample

Minimum 1 ½ liter of water (1500 ml) needs to be collected from each sample from river or lake. After receiving the sample:
1. 500ml sent for the analysis of the laboratory
2. 500ml placed in a vial and added in the installation
3. 100 ml mixed with the “Earth’s Water”
4. 400 ml stored.

Today the project includes 30 samples of water from 25 rivers and 5 lakes while the Earth’s water level is 3000 ml.

Documentation

For each water sample, the following items shown on the official website:

1. The video documentation of sampling
2. The date and the coordinates and the map of the point of sampling
3. Photograph of the sample-bottle
4. Sampler’s personal information* (Resume, photo, company profile, website etc.)
5. The information material of the river / lake
6. The laboratory sample analyzes

*The name is required only.

Chemical analysis

The chemical analyzes carried out are the following concerning the physical characteristics of the water:

pH 20°C, Conductivity 20°C, Total Residue > 105 °C, Suspended Solids, Hardness Total, Alkalinity Total, Phenolphthalein Alkalinity, Residual Hardness, Chloride, S.A.R., Potassium, Bicarbonate, Carbonate, Sulfate, Phosphate, Ammonium, Nitrate, Magnesium, Calcium, Nitrite.

Sterilisation

When the 500 ml of liquid are added, they are simultaneously sterilised, with the addition of copper ions.

The second sterilisation procedure is performed upon the addition of every 10 tubes, and it is implemented by the Environmental Science Faculty of the National & Kapodistrian, University of Athens.

EVENTS

As well as the core of the project which is the installation containing the samples, there is a wide array of parallel events on offer as part of the World Water Museum. There will be performances, events, presentations etc, while the organisers will participate in conferences, exhibitions and other events in Greece and internationally.

KETI HALIORI

Keti Haliori is a conceptual, new media artist living and working in Athens. She creates interdisciplinary projects, concerning the Darwinian and technological evolution, the divine, the universal-cosmic informa­tion and the consciousness. Her work also deals with humanitarian and environmental issues.

During the years 2008–2010, she protested for the refugees who were victims or survivors of shipwrecks and minefields. She made public actions and installations at the entrance gates-host of Chios, Alexandroupolis, Lavrion and in major urban centres of Athens and Thessaloniki. Since 2011, she has activated the World Water Museum installation, a permanent interactive project about the global lack of water and creates and curates water projects and workshops.

Επίσημη ιστοσελίδα: www.keti-haliori.com

My relationship with water

I was born and raised in the rocky and dry Greek island with the contradictory name: Hydra. According to the local residents probably the name was given, many years ago because the island had plenty of good drinking water.

My childhood memories are full of cisterns and water reservoirs, housewives filling their buckets hung with ropes, small tabs in the kitchens and the phrase “mind the water” around the air.

Our lives were depending on the weather. Rain was a blessing and every winter we were looking forward to the rainy days. The first water was to clean the roof tile and with the second we would fill in the cisterns. Even now the lives of the locals depend a lot on the water that they carefully collect in the reservoirs while the imported with the water tanks is considered of lower quality and definitely not for drinking.

My house is on the central paved road that comes up the sea level to the mountain. The pavement curbs at each side are unusually high up to 60-70 cm in cases. Visitors are always surprised and ask themselves how it comes and they were constructed with such a shape! And the road still keeps its old name among the locals, although authorities have nowadays renamed upon a local hero. They call it “The River”.

In the winter the road with the name “The River” overflows from the rapids coming down the mountain. The high pavement curbs protect the houses keeping water out and locals use boards as makeshift bridges to cross over. I was always looking forward to seeing the … “river” from my window and the people balancing on the temporary bridges.

Hydra, the cisterns, the haunted phrase “mind the water”, mainly the euphemistically named “River” in from of my house, with the serious environmental issue of drinking water shortage in the planet have been the stimuli for the creation of the “World Water Museum” installation.

Το World Water Museum installation will eventuate to its physical location, at Hydra, in an exhibition space, shaped in the house by the … river. It will be in continuous and permanent evolution, as long as people will have the interest to contribute and send samples of water from every place of the planet.

Keti Haliori
Creator of World Water Museum

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Under the aegis
of the Hellenic Committee
of the Hydrogeology
I.A.H. National Chapter
With the cooprration of the
Laboratory of  Enviromental Chemistry
Department of Chemistry
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

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