The Sound of Water

Let’s try to play. Imagine you are playing a dot-to-dot puzzle game, a series of progressively numbered dots that, when joined together, create an image. Imagine that the dots to be connected are:

1. An exploration of the musicality of Tokyo’s urban railway and underground network, but not that of the jingles that characterize subway stations... A deeper musicality, resonating in the drip of water leaks that the service staff try to repair with everyday objects
2. The kanji 漏, which is read rō and which forms the Japanese verb 漏れる moreru (‘to leak’), whose radical, i.e., what concerns the essence of the kanji itself and which helps us to understand its meaning, is that of “water,” 水
3. A typical subject of Western painting: still life
4. Haiku tradition of juxtaposing images and sounds in resonance with one another
5. The concept of geophony
6. The permeability of the boundaries between inside and outside
7. The invisible forces that govern the physical world

Now imagine the artist Yuko Mohri (b. 1980, Kanagawa) connecting these dots as she strolls through the streets of Venice—the so-called “calli”—with her trolley in search of the elements that will make up the exhibition “Compose”, hosted in the spaces of the Japan Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale.

Yuko Mohri in Venice. Photo: kugeyasuhide

Mohri’s work combines kinetic art, sound, and found objects to create dynamic ecosystems. Her installations are characterized by the interaction of intangible forces, which she captures in sculptural forms to map out physical space. Using everyday objects, Mohri elevates the ordinary into a source of artistic expression, reflecting on themes such as nature, chance, and transience. In her exploration of the ephemeral, the accidental, sound becomes a fundamental element.

The exhibition at the 60th Venice Biennale—curated by Sook-Kyung Lee, the first foreign curator in the history of the Japanese Pavilion—brings together two installations, Moré Moré (Leaky) and Decomposition, in an interconnected way. In the former, the artist artificially creates water leaks and then attempts to repair them using objects found in local flea markets and antique furniture shops. The water is circulated through pumps, transforming the liquids and the “music” they produce into a large sound sculpture. In the latter, electrodes inserted into still lifes of rotting fruit convert their moisture state into electrical impulses that generate sounds and flickering lights. Both works are a fusion of the organic and the mechanical, reflecting the artist’s interest in the cyclicality and interconnectivity between natural and human-made systems.

Yuko Mohri, Moré Moré (Leaky): Variations, 2022. Courtesy of the artist, Project Fulfill Art Space, mother’s tankstation, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Let us now consider the particularly rich, inherently ecological soundscapes of haiku using one example: Matsuo Bashō’s most famous composition. 古池や蛙飛びこむ水の音 Furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto—An ancient pond / a frog jumps in / the sound of water (1686). How the individual sounds of biophony and geophony are heard is almost always determined by their relationship to something else. In the haiku tradition, sounds exist not in isolation but in combination. This is primarily an effect of the frequent structural use of this form of poetry, which consists of cutting and juxtaposing images in resonance with one another.

In this sense, haiku serve as a clue to illustrate the direction of Mohri’s approach towards sound, in which auditory attention shifts from the individual sound to the assemblage of sounds in an ecosystem. This interrelation not only involves sound but permeates the whole visual scene, the entire exhibition space, in a kind of dialogic effect: Designed by Takamasa Yoshizaka in the late 1950s, the building is characterized by holes in the floor and ceiling that blur the boundaries between inside and outside, allowing Mohri to incorporate rainwater—nature itself—into her work.

Yuko Mohri, Moré Moré (Leaky): Variations, 2022. Photo: Lorenzo Palmer Courtesy of the artist, Project Fulfill Art Space, mother’s tankstation, Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

In Mohri’s research, the perception of the forces that govern physical laws, of all that is invisible to the human eye, is not orchestrated but emerges naturally from the interaction of the elements that constitute her installations. This has been consistent throughout her career and is evident in works such as I/O—Circus without Circus (2016), and Magnetic Organ (2004/2011), to name but a few. Now, as then, she succeeded in transforming the space into a continuous and unpredictable soundscape.

Have you connected the dots? By observing these circuits of fusion, transformation, and alliance between systems, can we perceive the delicate balance between the natural and the artificial and contemplate the subtle and often unnoticed forces that permeate our world? If your answer is yes, you have completed this poetic dot-to-dot.