Exhibition 2023
Roderick Farrenkothen
Sensing sweet waters: Establishing a social access to the sensorial and basic need of water through Cape Town's public space for an enhanced well-being performance
this city
of wonder and celebration to outward beauty
but an inward reality that speaks to
urban override of history
culture
& landscape
and in turn its connection to that for which it is celebrated -
from the mountain that shows us the cosmos
the forest that romances and reveals
and the river that guides and cleanses
wonders that serve now as signposts for dislocation, inaccessibility, urbanisation
that present a hidden perception of stories forgotten
these stories however remain
untold in voice,
but seen in reclamation of the shore,
or of sweet rivers,
which bore the beginning of our written histories
a colonial adoption and racial segregation
that separated our connection to
these sweet waters,
that to which the Khoi first called our home -
our Camissa forgotten.
from river to canal to buried under road
that which gave life has been overridden,
a story that if remembered
could serve a well-being of its occupying citizens
from street to cushy home - dissociated
o’ how the benefit that natural can provide in recall
priority
engaging a life speaking to
the positive sensory perception and experience,
the cleanse,
that sweet waters, the mountain and the sea -
to romance, cosmos and heavens
of place that serves all