How to make water your own?

A Place Near the Well

Project is based on a story of one village in Lithuania named A Place Near the Well (Pašulniškės). The story goes through various water sources that have been used - from the spring, to wells, to sinks - and different kinds of connections to water that emerge, practical and spiritual. Installation features a clay well that visitors are invited to dig during the performance, to listen to archaic Baltic song dedicated to Water, and to see video work documenting the village and family history. The line between earthly matter - digging for water access, - and spirituality - daily meditation, blurs. Installation invites to make water “your own”, again, with a critical - and healing - look on the distinction between private ownership and personal connection.

What things are lost in the well, and what could be rebuilt, remembered, reconnected?

Research of historical and geological maps guided me to understand, that people situate themselves and build their lives around a water source. I learned that the act of privately or communally building an access to water, be it a well, or a sink, makes a water source private on communal or personal level. But, now, that my family has built our lives and our technology, we relieved our material needs, and we still miss something… Although we don’t search for water anymore, we search for a connection. For a few years now, every morning my mum pours tap water into a stone vessel outside and meditates. It is the same water as we use for washing dishes, bathing, drinking, but every morning it becomes something more, loses its functional aspect and gains a ritualistic sacredness.