Nadar en seco | Dry swimming

 GUA, Wroclaw, 2025, part of “Perpetua” with collective Hydroza

https://vimeo.com/1128423024?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

I have learned to swim on dry land. It turns out to be better than doing it in the water. There is no fear of sinking because you are already at the bottom, and by the same logic, you are already drowned beforehand. You also avoid having to be fished out by the light of a lantern or in the dazzling light of a beautiful day. Finally, the absence of water keeps your body from swelling up.

1957, Virgilio Piñera, translated by Mark Schafer

Swimming that once for me was a symbol of relief and relaxation, becomes another activity subordinated to the logic of achievement. The objects in this series – deformed and alien – emphasize this transformation, showing swimming as an act full of tension between the body and its environment. In the context of the contemporary “Burnout Society” described by Byung-Chul Han, rest has been transformed from a pleasure into a duty of productivity.

I am attracted here by the concept of drowning, lack of oxygen, the loss and exhaustion. Relaxation starts to be out of reach, a forgotten privilege once sweet, now disturbing.

Those photographs are meant to be tangible, They will be produced on soft, plushy fur-like material. The same one that is used to dry oneself, to swipe the dust, to comfort and be tucked in. Merleau-Ponty knew this: the hand never truly meets itself, the touching and the touched forever in asymmetry. The fur is an invitation, a promise of closeness, but it’s also a barrier, a reminder of the distance that remains even in contact.

It is like dry swimming

References:

1.

He aprendido a nadar en seco. Resulta más ventajoso que hacerlo en el agua. No hay el temor a hundirse pues uno ya está en el fondo, y por la misma razón se está ahogado de antemano. También se evita que tengan que pescarnos a la luz de un farol o en la claridad deslumbrante de un hermoso día. Por último, la ausencia de agua evitará que nos hinchemos.

No voy a negar que nadar en seco tiene algo de agónico. A primera vista se pensaría en los estertores de la muerte. Sin embargo, eso tiene de distinto con ella: que al par que se agoniza uno está bien vivo, bien alerta, escuchando la música que entra por la ventana y mirando el gusano que se arrastra por el suelo.

Al principio mis amigos censuraron esta decisión. Se hurtaban a mis miradas y sollozaban en los rincones. Felizmente, ya pasó la crisis. Ahora saben que me siento cómodo nadando en seco. De vez en cuando hundo mis manos en las losas de mármol y les entrego un pececillo que atrapo en las profundidades submarinas. 

Virgilio Piñera, 1957

2. The human body is lighter than the water, a fact of considerable practical importance, as showing that each has in himself that which will prevent his being drowned, if he will only breathe naturally, and desist from struggling.

The catastrophe of drowning is usually referrible to nervous agitation, and to spasmodic and ill-directed efforts in the extremities. All swimmers have a vivid recollection of the great difficulty experienced in keeping themselves afloat, when they first resorted to aquatic exercises and amusements. In especial they remember the short, vigorous, but flurried, misdirected, and consequently futile strokes which, instead of enabling them to skim the surface, conducted them inevitably to the bottom. Indelibly impressed too are the ineffectual attempts at respiration, the gasping and puffing and the swallowing of water, inadvertently gulped instead of air.

Animal Locomotion Or walking, swimming, and flying, with a dissertation on aëronautics

Author: J. Bell Pettigrew
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3. Julio Cortázar
Axolotl
(Final del juego, 1956)

         Hubo un tiempo en que yo pensaba mucho en los axolotl. Iba a verlos al acuario del Jardín des Plantes y me quedaba horas mirándolos, observando su inmovilidad, sus oscuros movimientos.

(…)

Los ojos de los axolotl me decían de la presencia de una vida diferente, de otra manera de mirar. Pegando mi cara al vidrio (a veces el guardián tosía inquieto) buscaba ver mejor los diminutos puntos áureos, esa entrada al mundo infinitamente lento y remoto de las criaturas rosadas. Era inútil golpear con el dedo en el cristal, delante de sus caras no se advertía la menor reacción. Los ojos de oro seguían ardiendo con su dulce, terrible luz; seguían mirándome desde una profundidad insondable que me daba vértigo.