The high-ceilinged halls of the 1930s functionalist Bergen Kunsthall building have recently housed another rather different vision of functional architecture, that conjured up by American artist Oscar Tuazon. After dissecting the ideological, structural, and philosophical underpinnings of minimalist architecture, construction, and sculpture throughout his career, Tuazon’s 2016 inauguration of his ongoing “school of water” marked a shift towards more explicit incorporation of activist themes and strategies. The project consists of impromptu “schools” in water literacy, physically taking place in structures inspired by Holly and Steve Baer’s domed Zome House, an experiment developed in the American Southwest in early 1970s. Intrinsic to these houses is their ability to be heated and cooled by sunlight and water, a technology also familiar to Aboriginal architecture. Tuazon credits the 2016 Standing Rock protests and its key figures as inspiration and teachers for “Water School“, stating that he first encountered the idea of such a phenomenon there, when faced with slogans such as “Water is life” and “Water connects us all”.
The Bergen exhibit featured four models of wooden structures from previous “Water School” iterations — all of which took place in conjunction with political battles for water and land rights in the United States — at 60% of the original size. Constructed of cardboard, plywood, and tape, these seemed lightweight, located at seemingly random intervals throughout the four rooms. Their windows are decorated with patterns of sun and moon, trees and fire, and other subjects, which are powder-printed on the glass. Inside one of these structures, Los Angeles Water School, 2023, a fountain built into a tree on Mount Fløyen in Bergen peacefully circulates water and is reminiscent of the lake just outside the kunsthall building. As I walked in and around the models, their odd, irregular geometric structures seemed to change as I moved, sometimes appearing like shelters or playhouses, sometimes like sculptural joints.
The models were accompanied by a selection of new and old sculptures and murals, as well as five beautifully designed masks by Tuazon’s friend and mentor, Alaska Native artist Lawrence “Ulaaq” Ahvakana. The exhibition offered a density of information: the history and artwork of the Zome de Baers house, architecture and indigenous knowledge, as well as specific political battles for waterways and land were explained in detail – in wall texts, a document and accompanying documents. publication – as a theoretical framework for Tuazon’s project and its previous iterations. The video was particularly valuable in this regard. Cedar Spring Water School, 2023, which features an interview with two prominent Newe personalities. As they speak of their physical and spiritual relationship to the water and land around Spring Valley, Nevada, and the massacres of their ancestors that took place there between 1850 and 1900, a framework for historical awareness and a different reflection on ecological issues opens up. As a relational project, “Water School” incorporates various means of activation, such as a library integrated into one of the models, as well as lectures and conversations. Despite interesting titles, the library seemed a bit whimsical, or symbolic at best, both because of the abundance of information elsewhere and because it’s not comfortable enough for longer study. Exploring “the dynamics and power games that regulate access to land, water and infrastructure”, the programming included local practitioners and revolved around water, ocean studies and indigenous communities in Greenland. . Although the issues of Norway’s colonial history have been mentioned in some events and mediations, I wish there had been a discussion specifically devoted to this topic, especially since the large-scale protests against the he continued government land exploitation and human rights abuses of the Sami people in Fosen was unfolding in Oslo just as the show was on the air.
The fragility of the cardboard models of Tuazon indicates their impermanence; attending one of the conversations inside a “Water School” work, I did not dare lean on the tenuous material. The objects embody the precariousness of natural resources and cultural diversity within a colonial capitalist system. The strength of the exhibition lies in the way Tuazon emphatically communicated this with intelligent aesthetic awareness.
