Sacred Ecohydrology

Merel Maan Galama grew up in the Netherlands, where she observed how water is channelled through man-made landscapes that have been shaped by centuries of flooding. Against this backdrop, Khadka and Galama’s work delves deeply into diverse aquatic landscapes, juxtaposing the river cosmologies of the Himalayas with the regulated water systems of the Netherlands.

The field recordings collected by the duo – of ditches, canals, rivers, alluvial plains, pumps, sluices and submerged environments – reveal how listening can draw attention to the tensions between coexistence and control.

In the course of their field research, a water creature emerged – condemned as an intruder, characterised as aggressive and branded as destructive. Its presence is associated with severe ecological damage. However, the work approaches these attributions from the creature’s imagined perspective and moves between fact and fiction to explore water as a living, dynamic relationship.

*Sacred Ecohydrology* is a collective listening experience in which water is more than merely a resource.

By combining ambient sounds, stories and live acoustic interventions using Himalayan gongs and cymbals, the artists seek to understand water as a collaborative partner, as a carrier of memories, stories and forms of knowledge that ceaselessly transcend the systems designed to control it.