Unveiling water: Embodied explorations of urban waterscapes

Introduction

Water is essential to life, yet in urban environments, it often goes unnoticed – concealed within infrastructure or reduced to a purely functional role (Illich 1985; Gandy 2014). Unveiling Water: Embodied Explorations of Urban Waterscapes proposed an experimental and embodied approach to reconnecting with water (Neimanis 2017), challenging participants to rethink its past, present, and future significance in the context of the CARPA9 conference and Helsinki, a city deeply bound to water.

Rooted in two investigations – one focused on urban bathing, exploring the interplay of cities, bodies, and water (Balmaseda Domínguez 2025a), and the other on “spatial performativity” (Berzal Cruz 2023), examining the relationship between performance and space – the workshop drew inspiration from research and art that treat the body as a living instrument to engage with the larger collective body of urban waters, fostering creativity, ecological awareness, and a shared water culture.

Due to the guideline of conducting the workshop indoors, the experiment focused on embodying urban waterscapes through participants’ imagination rather than direct engagement with outdoor environments. An intimate space for reflection was created, where participants connected first with their own watery essence, then with familiar water environments, and finally through collective sharing. The aim was to facilitate what Astrida Neimanis calls a hydrocommons, a shared, living fabric that flows through and beyond us, reminding us that we are not separate from water but part of it.

In this piece, I invite the reader to follow the two initial experiments of the workshop: The Body as a Vessel and Unveiling Connections with Other Bodies of Water. The third experiment, Hidden Waters in the Built Environment, could not take place as the first two required more time and space, but it appears as an epilogue for those who wish to continue. The text corresponds to what was prepared and read during the session, lightly adapted for written form [additions marked with brackets], followed by a discussion of the methodology and reflections on the workshop.

First experiment: The body as a vessel

“I invite you, [reader], to find a comfortable position and please close your eyes. [if you can find someone to read it to you, of course].

Feel yourself as water.

Notice the water that comes in and out with your b r e a t h .

Imagine yourself as a vessel, carrying water from here to somewhere else, and carrying water from where you came from to here

in your sweat, in your urine, in your saliva.

But this water is also ancient water, the same water that has circulated for millions of years, recirculating in an endless cycle.

An  e t e r n a l , shared memory.

Imagine drinking a glass of water, taking a hot bath, eating a fruit.

Where do those waters go?

They circulate through bodies, infrastructures, lakes, seas, clouds… and that is also you.

And think also of how they arrive to us.

Do we know their source?

Do we know if they are scarce?

What is their composition?

Their temperature?

Let’s now open our eyes. Look around the room.

Can you find traces of water here?

Where?”

Second experiment: Connecting with other bodies of water

“Now, I invite you to listen to this audio [imagine different sounds of water dripping, hissing, murmuring, dissolving, flowing].

Just let yourself g o . . .

and

imagine possible urban waterscapes in connection with these sounds.

Where do the sounds take you?

What place, what landscape, what imaginaries arise?

Then, think of the place where you live at this moment.

Take one minute to write down the waters you connect with there.

What waters are part of your everyday environment, and how do you relate to them?

How much do you actually know about these waters?

Please describe in detail, so others may dream those waters with you.”

Context and methodology

I am Alba, a PhD architect, educator, and researcher. I am co-founder of the Performing Space Association, an international research platform that explores the relationship between performance and space from a post-disciplinary perspective. It brings together architecture, performing arts, theatre, and social sciences to understand how body, environment, and action mutually inform one another. Its aim is to create a global network of academic and artistic exchange through conferences, workshops, and experimental projects. In Performing Space, we emphasize that our bodies are the instruments through which we perceive our environment (Merleau-Ponty 2002).

The time and space I shared in the CARPA9 conference are based on my doctoral thesis, entitled Cities, Bodies, and Water: Urban Bathing as a Spatial Practice, completed at the University of Roma Tre in January 2025. In this research I studied urban bathing beyond the material aspects (the container or the architecture). In fact, I became deeply curious about what was practiced in the space: the embodied experience of bathing. That curiosity led me to a parallel investigation into the performativity of water, which gave rise to a series of experiments at the intersection of the three central foci of my research: cities, bodies, and water.

In these investigations, Performing Water emerged as an embodied method for understanding and engaging with water, based on the awareness that the human body is itself a movement within the hydrological cycle (Neimanis 2017), and part of a broader environmental body that holds us all (Halprin 2021; Ingold 2000). Two other important references guide this method: Ivan Illich, who warned that modern infrastructures alienate us from the very elements that sustain life, enclosing them within systems of control, and who defended water as an agent rather than a mere resource; and Matthew Gandy, whose notion of urban metabolism reminds us that cities themselves are ecological bodies, flows of water, energy, waste, and life that interconnect human and nonhuman worlds.

Building upon these theoretical foundations, the method also draws inspiration from artistic practices that engage the body as a site of ecological awareness and transformation, such as Doris Humphrey’s Water Study (1923), Jan Niemczyk’s Bath in the Fountain (1960), Anna Halprin’s The Bath (1967) and Experiments in the Environment (1966–1971), and Zhang Huan’s To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond (1997). These works informed the development of site-specific, body-based actions co-created with diverse communities, students, academics, bathers, and practitioners, which became not only forms of embodied research but also platforms for embodied pedagogy.

Through this process, four conceptual frameworks emerged as tools for future experimentation and engagement with water, which I continue to explore in different formats (Balmaseda Domínguez 2025b):

• Embodying Water (1)
• Bathing Fantasies (2)
• Reviving Bathing Spaces (3)
• Unveiling Water (4)

The workshop

We were in the perfect place: Finland, or Finwater, as I called it in the workshop, one of the countries with the highest density of freshwater in the world, surrounded by the sea. The workshop took place indoors, within the Theatre Academy in Helsinki, a building that, like most, conceals its waters behind walls. The space was dimly lit; cushions, chairs, and mats were arranged in a circle. I began by introducing myself and the references behind my research before guiding participants through the experiments.

The first experiment invited participants to slow down, close their eyes, and sense water within and around them, breathing as tide, skin as membrane, and body as vessel. Through guided words, they became aware of the circulation of ancient waters within their own bodies, tracing invisible connections between breath, sweat, and the hydrological cycles that sustain life. Participants, mostly lying down or seated, followed the narrative quietly, some moving slowly. I did not wish to impose strict timing; when I asked whether they wanted to stay longer after the first experiment, they said yes, and I accepted their need.

The second experiment expanded that intimacy into imagination. We listened to an audio composition created by Bruno Migliavacca Santos, a student from the seminar Stadt, Wasser, Körper, which I co-taught in Stuttgart while working at the Chair SuE (Städtebau & Entwerfen 2022). It mixed recordings of rivers under asphalt, storm drains, swimming pools, rain or a shower sound. Participants wrote short texts describing where the audio had taken them. Then, they recalled the waters of their own cities: the ones they cross daily, drink from, or rarely notice. The exercise unfolded into storytelling, mapping, and shared memory.

The third experiment, which was meant to take place outside the room, exploring the building to locate its hidden Waters, was never completed. The need to share and to listen in the group was too strong. Stories of present and absent waters emerged, imaginaries of water as living beings. The snow of Helsinki mingled with the sea of Australia. Rituals of thermal bathing, ice baths, river baths, and saunas intertwined. Feelings of danger, guilt, pleasure, and scent blended.

Humidity, memory, access, sound, invisibility…

Reflections

In writing this text, I feel deeply the limits of language when discussing about water. And Unveiling Water: Embodied Explorations of Urban Waterscapes reaffirmed the necessity of embodied pedagogy. Performance, in this sense, becomes a tool for environmental awareness: it allows us to perceive systems otherwise too vast or invisible in our daily urban lives. By situating the body within these flows, we dissolve the illusion of separateness that underlies the environmental crisis.

I learned, through how the second exercise naturally extended beyond its time, that there is a need for spaces where we can share sensations, narratives, memories, and imaginaries of water. Spaces that are safe, accessible, sensory, and interdisciplinary. A commons that adds an emotional layer to the current conversation on water. Because we are all water; we all carry a water memory, a story to tell, and not sharing, not embodying, is the fastest way to forget something so essential.

(epilogue)

Third experiment: Hidden waters

“In our buildings and cities, many waters are invisible.

Pipes are hidden behind walls. Rivers are covered or buried. Infrastructures conceal the flows that sustain us.

Let’s explore building as an hydrolandscape.

Use your bodies to reconnect with water here.

Move, listen, sense.”

References

Balmaseda Domínguez, Alba. 2025a. Cities, Bodies, and Water: Urban Bathing as a Spatial Practice. PhD diss., Roma Tre University.

Balmaseda Domínguez, Alba. 2025b. “Performing Water: Experiments at the Intersection of Bodies, Cities, and Water.” Proceedings of the Performing Space 2024 Conference. doi.org/DOI:10.12681/ps2023.8407.

Berzal Cruz, Pablo. 2023. “Performativity in Ritual Space.” In Performing Space, edited by E. Pirovolakis, M. Mikedaki, and P. Berzal Cruz, 81–101. Athens: Nissos.

Halprin, Anna. 2021. Experiments in the Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966–1971. Primary Information.

Illich, Ivan. 1985. H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness. Dallas Institute Publications.

Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2002. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.

Neimanis, Astrida. 2017. Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. London: Bloomsbury. 

Gandy, Matthew. 2014. The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination. MIT Press.