Shoreline / video

Video created on the La Plata River, photos by Nadia Koszak and Juan Pablo Ferrer, work created during their stay at Residencia Corazón, La Plata Argentina.

I’m sitting on the bank of the river, twist the lid of a jar with blood open, in none of my works do I extract the blood directly out of my vagina. Through this separation, even though the menstrual blood is mine, it can be more universal, the information about the source of the blood will appear at the end of the film. The jar resembling an ink-pot is immersed in mud. I’m putting my fingers into it, like I was putting them directly into the ground. I’m marking my body with blood. These are abstract forms, lines, veins, signs, scars. Identically, I’m marking the river bank, filling the indents created by the river with my blood. The sand shivers and purrs rhythmically, as the waves do, it isn’t sand actually, but something in-between sand and clay – that’s why the record of the waves is so clear, I’m stroking it as a living being. The whole river seems like a living being, warm, damp and steamy.
The images start to infiltrate each other, the bloody hand is leaving a mark on the riverbank and in the water, I’m rolling myself into the water, the water is washing the blood marks off of me, I’m putting the jar/ ink-pot into the river, the blood coming out of it creates a red trail, which I’m erasing. I’m immersing myself into the muddy water of La Plata I wanted to do this from the very start, since I discovered that Buenos Aires isn’t located by the seaside. The water of La Plata is salty and sweet, coloured like a coffee, I tangle with it as a person existing in two realities – simultaneously familiar and foreign. The river looks like the sea, it reflects light, it’s shine makes me close my eyes. The water is like a life-giving mud, not crystal-clear cold water of the North, it’s like bodily fluid, like mother Earth’s foetal waters. I’m immersing myself in it and joining the whole world of organic matter. When I leave it, I have the sand even in my ear. It whispers secrets, I would prefer not to know. Whilst producing this video, we see a helicopter flying above us – the sinister sound of it’s blades doesn’t let us forget terrible events which took place here. It doen’t let us forget about the people, who disappeared in the river bed of La Plata, during the times of the dictatorship. In the film, my body multiplies, easily moving in the water, I’m gradually taking the embryo pose, I’m inhaling and exhaling under water rythmically, with the waves. Gradually the image calms down. The horizon line appears. Someone is walking on it, from one side to another, but this is not me, it is someone Else.