Sweet Waters live phase documentation

Project Outline: Developed over an 18 month period involving over 50 walkers and many hundreds online, Sweet Waters was part of Richard White’s ongoing investigation of walking arts as social justice intervention, developing tactics for articulating and materialising corporeal experience and affective resonance. The project resonates with UNESCO World Heritage programmes, specifically attending to legacies of slave-ownership. The project was commissioned for Bath Festival Fringe, funded by Arts Council England with support from Bath Spa University, Festival of Nature and Fringe Arts Bath. An installation at a heritage site, Saltford Brass Mill, followed as part of Museums Week and Journey to Justice Bristol. Participation was extended using social media with trails generated live and aggregated. Referencing body fluids and the memory of water folded in an understanding of the water cycle, the project generates insights and observations on volatile and porous bodies (Longhurst 2001), the power of things and memory making practices (Micieli-Voutsinas 2016; Bennett 2010).

This item includes documentary images captured by the author and by walkers, a screen grab of the aggregated social media trails and a podcast from Avon Stories as sound track to a slide show of documentary images. The podcast, Avon Stories 10 was recorded with Sarah Connelly during one of the walks, reproduced here with permission, details below.