Bodies of Water – Readings and Reflections on Liquid Archives

Water flows through our bodies and across the planet. Up to 60% of the adult human body is water; before birth, we develop surrounded by amniotic fluid. Water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface. We are, in Astrida Neimanis’ words, bodies of water—connected through water to other bodies, places, histories, and environments. Yet these watery relationships are far from equal: access to water is increasingly precarious, shaped by climate change, drought, pollution, and profound inequalities.

In Jasmine Togo-Brisby’s exhibition*Liquid Archives*, the ocean takes center stage: a body of water that carries histories of colonial exploitation, displacement, and the transoceanic trafficking of human beings, but also a space of memory, connection, and healing.

What changes when we understand ourselves as bodies of water—porous, interconnected, and entangled with other bodies, histories, and environments?

Inspired by Astrida Neimanis’*Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology*(2017), this interactive tour brings her ideas into dialogue with Togo-Brisby’s works*From Bones and Bellies*(2021) and*Mother Tongue* (2020). Together, we explore water as an archive, a form of memory, a relationship, and a condition of life itself.

Organized in cooperation with the Body History Working Group of the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies.