HOLOSCENES is a visceral, visual, and public collision of the human body and water, born from the concern that our troubled relationship to water will become the central issue of the 21st century.
Sited in public space, HOLOSCENES features a totemic aquarium-like sculpture filled and drained by a custom hydraulic system, capable of flooding the aquarium with twelve tons of water in as little as 45 seconds. Viewable from nearly 360 degrees, the work may be seen by thousands of audience members at one time. The flooding aquarium is inhabited by a rotating cast of performers conducting everyday behaviours — e.g. selling fruit, getting dressed, reading a paper, tuning a guitar — sourced from collaborators across the planet.
HOLOSCENES weaves the unraveling story of water — the rising seas, melting glaciers, intensifying floods and droughts — into the patterns of the everyday. The ebb and flow of water and resulting transfiguration of human behaviour offers an elemental portrait of our collective myopia, persistence, and, for both better and worse, adaptation.