Alexandra Niaka | The river where you set your foot just now is gone

The research was grounded in extensive fieldwork. During the residency, I made repeated visits to Thessaly and Astritsa, a village in the Karditsa region and my family’s place of origin. Focusing on this single community gave the project its direction, as all its primary material—including interviews, sound recordings, photographs, and spatial documentation—was gathered there.

Through interviews with local residents, particularly older women, I documented accounts about the recent floods, as well as the traditions, myths, and everyday practices surrounding water. These conversations became the foundation for the installation’s narrative structure and soundscape.

The fieldwork also included extensive visual and spatial documentation through photography, video, and 3D scanning. Local television stations and residents generously shared archival footage of the floods, including images and videos captured during the disaster and its aftermath. This material became part of the installation, serving as a bridge between documentary evidence and artistic reinterpretation.

Recordings of local people singing, alongside field recordings collected throughout the landscape, formed the basis of the installation’s soundscape. My collaboration with sound artist Fanis Sakellariou was instrumental in shaping a cohesive sound world for the work.

Historical and bibliographic research was another important strand of the project, with support from Maria Orliakli. I worked closely with the publisher of “Thessalian Yearbook,” who provided access to volumes dating back to 1986 that document the region’s history and folklore, and consulted a range of publications on Thessalian mythology, folk traditions, magic, landscape, and hydrology. I also studied collections of local songs whose narrative patterns reveal how collective memory is preserved and transmitted.

Another strand of the research focused on developing the installation’s physical elements, specifically the creation of the wells. Their form was not predetermined but emerged through an exploration of their cultural significance within the local community. In the region, wells are often referred to as ‘eyes,’ places through which one can see beyond the present, into both the past and the future. This symbolic dimension placed them at the heart of the installation, as sites of transition and observation.

The wells were conceived as vessels for both image and sound, housing the project’s videos and aural testimonies within their interiors. The two principal wells embody different yet complementary temporalities. The first centers on the flood itself, drawing on footage contributed by local residents and regional news outlets. The second is a personal journey, recorded two years after the disaster, documenting the landscape after the waters had receded. Together, these two temporal perspectives create a dialogue between the event and its remembrance.

The wells were constructed from polished metal, a material chosen for its reflective properties. Their mirrored surfaces evoke both the physical properties of water and the installation’s digital language, where surfaces become spaces that reflect, refract, and reproduce information.

During the residency, I also developed an experimental technique for producing bio-textiles, which became an integral part of the sculptural installation. Water is their primary ingredient, and they are created through a process that combines organic materials with hand-crafted techniques. The textiles were then woven and draped around the wells, forming a kind of skin or membrane that envelops them and connects them to the surrounding environment.

At its core, the installation explores the ways landscapes, memories, and stories are recorded. Rather than presenting these traces as fixed documents, it reassembles them as dynamic elements through digital processes, including 3D reconstruction, volumetric capture, and AI-assisted model generation. The work’s virtual environment emerged from this material—a composite of field recordings, archival documents, and ongoing research. The result is a fragmented, constantly shifting landscape in which the real and the imaginary coexist.

The voices of the villagers function not simply as documentary evidence but as living presences that activate the space. Within the physical installation, the sculptural elements of the wells serve as points where these voices converge through an interactive sound environment. This interactivity extends beyond the installation site through a custom mobile application that links visitors’ physical movement to the work itself: depending on their position in relation to the wells, different layers of sound and narrative are activated.

The work does not seek to offer a linear narrative or a definitive conclusion. Instead, it creates a space for reflection in which memory, mythology, and technology become intertwined. Water, in its constant state of transformation, becomes a metaphor for the nature of experience itself: every moment is unique; every story remains fluid.

Ultimately, the installation was shaped through a process of shared knowledge. It grew from the voices, images, sounds, and fragments of memory generously entrusted to me by the people of Astritsa, whose stories became the work's primary material.