Book presentation: Rendre l'eau à la terre (FR)
Artist Suzanne Husky presents Rendre l'eau à la terre. Alliances dans les rivières face au chaos climatique, the new book she co-created with French philosopher Baptiste Morizot, in which her watercolor drawings dialogue with a reflection on beaver hydrology and a plea for restoring alliances towards a philosophy of living waters.
Husky goes in conversation with Olivier Rubbers, activist and member of the Rangers organization, who facilitated the reintegration of beaver populations in Belgium.
WIELS Bookshop
In French
Baptiste Morizot & Suzanne Husky, Rendre l'eau à la terre. Alliances dans les rivières face au chaos climatique, 2024, Actes Sud
On our planet, living rivers flow through wetlands that protect life. Yet we have limited these environments to build our cities and industrial farms. By restricting, draining and covering rivers with concrete, they are no longer able to protect us from a disturbed climate. Faced with this threat, it is time to return water to the land and restore water to the deserts caused by extractivism.
How can we bring water back to life? By examining the history of rivers. We discover that they evolved together with a life form that has worked for millions of years to hydrate the environment: beavers. They slow down the water, infiltrate it into the soil, purify it and share it with all living things. In this way, they create oases of life that can get us through droughts, fires and floods. Their action enhances life. Can the beaver, hunted as a pest for centuries, now become an ally? Can the beaver inspire a philosophy of action that is finally free of the cult of oil, machinery and control? Can we learn from another animal how to heal rivers? What is at stake is a paradigm shift toward a way of thinking about living water that can quench the thirst of a parched world. In these troubled times, the moment has come to forge alliances with non-human forces. To explore the possibility of participating as humans in the self-healing capacity of the world.
BIO
Suzanne Husky is a visual artist trained in agroecology whose work has been focused in the past years on the representation of streams and beavers. Landscape painting and photography appeared after the eradication of beavers who have an extraordinary agency over the riparian landscape. Unfortunately most of us only have the experience of streams and rivers that have been altered by humans and do not know what a healthy stream looks like. Remembering what a healthy stream is a representation challenge. Her art is dedicated to rehydrating our deep time memory of northern American riparian areas.