Purity of Water | La Pureté de l'eau

About
The Purity of Water is the outcome of a research-creation project
that elucidates the connections between purity and cleanliness on
the one hand, and purity and pastoralism on the other. Freshwater,
understood as a singular entity, is divided here into three stages of
its life: dropping from the sky; flowing downstream; rushing from the
tap. Toxic, rotting wood stands in for the urban infrastructure that
controls water’s movement on the way to the faucet.
The wood pieces in The Purity of Water were excavated from
several feet below the asphalt of rue Saint Philippe in Saint-Henri
during street construction in the summer of 2016. Based on their
decomposition and shape, they are likely cast-off railroad ties from
the streetcar line that used to run down rue Saint-Jacques, or from
the railroad tracks a block away. The rain water (red dyed) and tap
water (blue dyed) were collected from the same corner. The river
water (yellow dyed) was collected from Quenneville Bay at the parc
de l’Aqueduc in LaSalle, where the Saint-Lawrence River meets the
aqueduct that delivers water to the city of Montreal.
All of these water samples will melt together, in a singular puddle.
Dyed water makes the currents in the puddle visible, and acts as
a reminder that the singular puddle holds within it a multiplicity of
origin stories.
While tap water is safe to drink, it is heavily treated; while “wild”
water is untouched, it is heavy with the sins of the past. “Past”
here can refer to upstream, where this water here was before, in
a polluted over there. It can mean the recent past, where a bag of
chips not properly discarded yesterday is floating down the river
today. Lastly, looming large in the post-industrial neighbourhood of
Saint-Henri, understanding ourselves in the present as the future of
the past - a future that the past was willing to sacrifice for the sake
of a developed present.