Performing Water: Experiments at the Intersection of Bodies, Cities, and Water

This contribution is based on my doctoral thesis entitled Cities, Bodies, and Water: Urban Bathing as a Spatial Practice, completed at the University of Roma Tre in January 2025. The study's engagement with the spatial practices of bathing, and thus with the embodied experience of space, led to a parallel investigation into the performativity of water. This curiosity gave rise to a series of experiments at the intersection of the three central foci of the research: cities, bodies and water. In these investigations, Performing Water emerged as an embodied method for understanding the hydrological body (Neimanis,2017) as part of a larger environmental body (Halprin; Ingold, 2000). Drawing on and being inspired by works such as Humphrey's Water Study (1923), Niemczyk's Bath in the Fountain (1960), Halprin's The Bath (1967) or Experiments in Environment (1967-1971), Chirico's Mysterious Bath Fountain (1973), and Huan's To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond (1997), a series of site-specific, body-based actions have been developed and co-developed. The selected experiments presented here not only served as forms of embodied research but also as platforms for embodied pedagogy. Through this process, four conceptual frameworks have emerged as tools for future experimentation and engagement with water: Embodying Water (1), Bathing Fantasies (2), Reviving Bathing Spaces (3), and Making Water Visible (4). Together, these pedagogical structures provide a foundation for continued exploration and collaborative research.