A speculative, process-based project, How Water Remembers includes socially engaged & site specific explorations in Vancouver’s Chinatown, imagining the possible False Creek mudflat inhabitants who will find home among us.

How Water Remembers explores how biodiversity and cultural diversity remembers, a flow of a way of life, a return of ancestral worldviews, traditional knowledge and stewardships, training an agile consciousness. We can highlight and daylight other ways of knowing that had once been invisible underground networks, in the same way underground streams are daylighted and recovered for fish, phytoplankton and numerous critters to once again find their way home.

Their arrival and return can be seen as embodying the role of future guardians led by the spectacular 龍母 [Dragon Mother].

My adaptation of the story of 龍母 [Dragon Mother] is presented in alliance with Sínulhḵay̓, the two headed sea serpent who tunnels the areas of Skwachays, legendary among the Skwx̱wú7mesh peoples. Gratitude to T'uy'tanat-Cease Wyss for sharing the story of Sínulhḵay̓.

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Research statement
How do we revitalize biodiversity within a city and nourish biodiverse ecologies in our everyday?

We are told that pandemics will increase the more biodiversity we lose. In city developments and urban sprawl, we have seen how much has been paved over, how development continues expanding into farmland and valleys, how many ancient forests continue to be cut. It seems difficult to stop this progression even though we know climate change and global warming is here. Yet, we can slow this warming by changing how we live in this world, adapting new consciousness to become sustainable, protecting and nourishing other species that our lives are entangled with.

A metaphor I’ve been working with is how the waters of False Creek once reached behind the Dr Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Gardens in Chinatown. What were once False Creek waters and mudflats were homes to millions of creatures. These waters and mudflats, now paved for roads and development, still haunt us today. Future flooding would see the return of waters by 2100, noted in the City of Vancouver 2018 report on climate change and sea level rise.

How Water Remembers includes an exploration into how biodiversity and cultural diversity remembers, a flow of a way of life, a return of ancestral worldviews, traditional knowledge and stewardships, training an agile consciousness. We can highlight and daylight other ways of knowing that had once been invisible underground networks, in the same way underground streams are daylighted and recovered for fish, phytoplankton and numerous critters to once again find their way home.

For minority cultures, this process of remediating includes reclaiming and bringing to light memories we’ve lost, both somatic and sensory, or memories and experiences we’ve hidden due to trauma, the hiding of traditions due to shame, hidden in an attempt to pass by assimilation, to avoid being discriminated against, or to not be stolen from again. It includes building compassion for these hidden places that once seemed isolated but now we bring forward values and ethics in community-building. Chinatown, once a segregated ghetto, is ground zero for surfacing any hiding of old ways, for the healing of trauma, building and rebuilding community to counter systemic impoverishment, gentrification, and increased anti-Asian racism during Covid 19.

Site specific & socially engaged explorations will be coming soon for How Water Remembers in Chinatown forming a continuation of this project. It includes a scavenger hunt / hidden object game activity over the course of the year — an opportunity to collect free art collectibles if you find them — for kids, adults, grandparents, community members, local businesses and art aficionados alike.