MANIFESTO
Through the World Water Society, every active citizen all over the world share a common concern: the protection of water. We are informed and active around actions that are meaningful through the language of art and aim at raising public awareness.
We are guided by spiritual convergence and ideological coexistence in a broader global culture of values, which claims and defends the right of free access in clean drinking water to all creatures of the planet. We consider ourselves enlisted defenders of this right and we are united for this purpose.
We join this Society with the unwavering belief that water is and must remain a natural gift, a heritage of nature. States should be the only non-profit providers of water services and we do not recognize private managers of water resources for profit. Water privatization is unthinkable.
Water teaches us the fundamental values of life from which we derive maximum satisfaction: we share natural goods, we are in solidarity, we protect nature, we respect the rest of the Earth’s inhabitants and its ecosystems, we are a positive part of our wonderful planet.
We believe that we are united by our common biological processes and needs. For the first nine months of our lives, we grow up in a bag of water. We are born and our body is made up of 70% water and without it, we cannot live more than a week. By protecting the water, we also protect ourselves.
We want each of us, individually, to be added and counted in the World Water Society. Through this community we want to express our opposition to any disastrous decision in water management and any criminal action that results in water scarcity in suffering countries and peoples. In addition, we consider it an inalienable right of the citizens of each country to have access to clean drinking water from the tap.
We co-sign knowing that the intentions of the World Water Society emanate from the field of action of art and are only an artistic act and expression. Although our stance on water management is a political one, we do not represent any political or party or position in any political system in the world. We do not represent any religion or doctrine and we are not bound by any statute principle.
The project is registered and is part of the activities of the World Water Museum.
IN MEMORY OF ULAY
World Water Society is dedicated to the memory of the great artist and activist Ulay, who passed away on March 2, 2020. Prophetic, environmentalist, ascetic, simple, always consistent in humanitarian principles, Ulay, a guru of art, left behind a huge work a very large part of which concerns water and his anxiety for its protection.
The World Water Society is essentially the enlargement of the “Greek Water Society” that Ulay himself had established in 2013 in Athens when he came to Greece at the invitation of Keti Haliori and World Water Museum in order to carry out the joint project entitled “Synergies”.
On June 1st, 2013, he collected water sample from Castalia Spring in Delphi and added it to the collection of the World Water Museum https://www.facebook.com/worldwatermuseum/videos/2866592083409517/
On June 2nd, 2013 he performed the “Greek Water Society”, at Technochoros gallery, Athens https://www.facebook.com/worldwatermuseum/videos/2866485560086836/
During this interactive performance Ulay, by using a blue-white cord and by wrapping it around the wrist of each participant, connected all of them and created a long human chain. Then he cut the cord into small pieces and tied it in the wrist of every one like a bracelet.
Afterward he announced that with this performance and human connection he symbolically established the “Greek Water Society”. Finally he handed it over to Keti Haliori, in order to expand it by promoting in Greece the values of water and the fair human right to access clean drinking water.