French & Mottershead (UK): Waterborne

Waterborne is an audio work that uses lyrical narrative to describe the afterlife of the human body in water.

The work invites the listener to imagine and relocate their body below the surface, as it decays and dislocates on a journey from an urban canal, via a tidal river, and out to sea. Waterborne is the story of micro inhabitations, algae and the flow of matter. Created using insights gathered from forensic anthropologists and ecologists, it reminds us we are bodies of water, and evokes ideas of migration and displacement, and of loss and regeneration.

Waterborne is available in Finnish and English, and is experienced looking out over Lake Kallavesi, from where it is technically possible to drift through inland waterways and the Saimaa Canal, to reach the Baltic Sea.

French & Mottershead (UK): Waterborne

French & Mottershead are the UK artist duo Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead. Their multidisciplinary practice invites us to think again about who we are and our ties to place and one another.

With a longstanding interest in placing the audience at the centre of their work, they have elaborated on themes such as individual and group behaviour, and how we connect with nature or urban life. Working across media from video, performance, photography, interventions and sound, the works are borne from rigorous research, often working with experts from a variety of fields. Their works have been commissioned by Tate Modern and The Photographers’ Gallery and exhibited in galleries and the public realm across the UK and internationally.

Waterborne is one of a series of Afterlife audio artworks reflecting on how different environments (woodland, water, museum and home) would act on a body after death, and is supported by The Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England.