Our Watery Selves

Olya Korsun received a contribution to develop a cinematic essay titled Our Watery Selves. Similar to rivers, humans are watery beings in flux. In this short cinematic essay, the days of the river Loire are seamlessly intertwined with the daily routine and musings of the filmmaker, trying to trace similarities between her own body and the body of the river. The Loire is the longest river in France and experiences drastic droughts, causing it to almost disappear every summer. The attempt of relating and connecting to a river addresses the possibility of compassion: can we genuinely be compassionate about the subjects of climate change or are we simply worried about losing the ways of life we are so accustomed to?

Olya works across film, text and research. Her practice is driven by the constant inquiry into the ways knowledge and imaginaries of the natural world and its phenomena are built, distributed and dismantled. Her writings, performative lectures, visual essays, always unapologetically personal and poetic, invite the viewers to defamiliarise themselves with what is considered known.