An interactive installation, the work comprises 52 photographs of waterfalls which Rúrí has taken on the banks of both muddy glacial torrents and clear mountain streams. The pictures are developed on transparent film, mounted between two sheets of glass and arranged in sliding slots installed inside a huge steel frame structure, literally forming an archive of sorts. All the photographs are precisely and scientifically labelled and when a photograph is drawn out one can hear the sound of that specific waterfall.
Since 2003 almost half of the waterfalls have been damaged or they do not exist any more. Their destruction is a side effect of one massive damming project, which was carried through in order to feed a new electrical power plant in the pristine highlands of Iceland. This power plant has the sole purpose to provide electricity for one aluminum smelter. The aluminum smelter is run by a company which is owned and operated by global investors.
The Archive – Endangered Waters offers a local example of a global situation.
Water is the most precious element on earth for human life. Still industrialization, both local and global, is the cause of massive polluting of waters. At the same time hundreds of millions of people are suffering from the lack of safe drinking water.
Certainly, water will become the blue gold of our future
03 Fra Feneyjum
