Honour the Hidden and Collected Waters

Project Facilitator: Marco Cremona

Artist: Billy X. Curmano

Saturday 15th April till Sunday 30th April

Space B, St James Cavalier, Valletta

Billy X. Curmano entertains and mixes video footage, live music, performance tricks and journal entries while honouring our most precious resource; water, which is a resource and a source of life often squandered and misused. He recounts his personal Water Trilogy from the abundance of water during a 3,809.96-kilometre Mississippi River Swim and its absence during a 40-day Death Valley Desert Fast to the warnings and changing states of Arctic Waters. He is an Ambassador for Clean Water carrying the Great Spirit from the Mississippi, or Father of Waters, to the Valletta International Visual Arts Festival. With intentional steps, his pilgrimage here gathers the hidden and collected waters of Malta for a sacred awareness and cleansing ceremony. The Mississippi and Maltese waters will be joined together in an ocean harp serenade to the cardinal directions. Abundance, absence and changing states become more about collecting, protecting/preserving and reusing waters. The remnant mixture will be encased in glass as sculptural documentation, evidence and tracks of the project.

*2,367.4-mile

—————— Project Note

Honor the Hidden and Collected Waters

*Mni Wiconi; Water is LIfe

From the Mississippi or Father of Waters to Mother Ganges (Ganga Mata), the importance of water to life itself is international and universal, but when a tap is simply twisted it’s easy to take it for granted. Such is the case in Malta as freshwater resources dwindle and are considered to be in a dire state  by EU standards. The award-winning artist Billy X. Curmano and the award-winning hydrologist Marco Cremona bring a sacred awareness and water cleansing ritual together with practical applications for protecting, preserving and reusing water in “live art” installations (on and off site) for the Valletta International Visual Arts Festival.

Billy X. Curmano is known for extreme projects in the environmental field, like desert fasting, an arctic journey and a 3,809.96-kilometre Mississippi River Swim as a performance and an environmental statement. Each morning before the Swim got underway, he performed a ritual that with variations became his Cleansing Ceremony. It has even been performed after a Pipe Ceremony with the approval of elders from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in Northern Minnesota. He carries the spirit of the Great River in a vial of water collected from its source on the first day of his swim for an intentional pilgrimage to the hidden and collected waters of Malta. Marco Cremona will help guide Billy’s journey to these important resources. He has earned a reputation with innovative techniques to reuse former wastewater and reverse borehole projects to enhance groundwater reserves while solving flood problems.

The two ‘Ambassadors for Clean Water’ will establish an eXperimental Art Research Terminal (XART) at the festival with documentation of the performative process and innovative technologies along with water samples, videos, charts, maps and other important information. Billy X. will add some river tales and water adventures before he joins the Mississippi and Malta waters in a sacred ritual and ocean harp serenade. The remnant waters are destined to remain in Valletta as post-performance sculptural evidence.

*Lakota

(“Water is Life” has become the rallying cry for the Water Protectors of the Standing Rock Sioux)
“It’s not the blood, but our deeds that make us human.” – Archived Billy