THE CHOREOGRAPHY OF WATER

SIMONA DEACONESCU, IOANA VREME MOSER, SIMINA OPRESCU
A TANGAJ COLLECTIVE PRODUCTION

THE BODY AS STREAMS

PROJECT SUMMARY

Choreographer and filmmaker Simona Deaconescu (RO), visual artist Ioana Vreme Moser (DE), and sound artist Simina Oprescu (DE) bring their futuristic and uncanny universes together in The Choreography of Water. The newest Tangaj Collective production critically addresses water movement from the oceans to the body. The performance explores our bodies as fluid territories, where human and non-human worlds meet, inviting audiences to rethink the political implications of water flows.

Four dancers interact with a series of water-based sculptures to generate sound, exploring the relationship between movement and fluid computing—a form of computation that emulates the natural rhythms of the planet through water streams. As the sculptures’ sounds are amplified and enriched, they transform into immersive sonic landscapes, becoming dynamic instruments for the performers to explore and manipulate.

The Choreography of Water is a speculative piece that envisions a different hydrological cycle for Earth’s future, listening to its streams, on a journey from the inside to the outside. It’s about the streams that weave the planet’s life from the intracellular to the extracellular fluids in our bodies, to the ports we build to connect with the world, to the shallow waters we use to get our food, the rivers that enrich our cities, to the deep sea that is as strange to us as a distant planet.

In January 2025, 45 selected dance artists from 12 countries participated in an international workshop audition at the National Center for Dance in Bucharest (CNDB). Four dancers residing in Romania, Belgium, Germany, and Italy were selected. The creation process for The Choreography of Water project will begin in March-April 2025 at CNDB, taking the form of an interdisciplinary exploratory laboratory, and will be further continued in early autumn with rehearsals and public presentations.

With funding already secured from the Administration of the National Cultural Fund of Romania (AFCN), the Goethe Institute in Bucharest, and scientific and logistic support from art and science NGOs Marginal and Qolony, the project is set to premiere on stage on the 4th and 5th of October 2025 at CNDB. A subsequent application for local funding will be made to create a smaller-scale in situ performance in Bucharest, near the Dambovita River and inside the Vacaresti Urban Delta.

Tangaj Collective is now seeking to develop the project as a public space performance for 2026. The artists hope to find a context to work near a body of water (sea, river, lake) and explore the conceptual depth of the project concerning this new territory. This transition to public space aspires to dissolve the boundaries between art and environment, transforming the body of water into both a stage and a collaborator.

CHOREOGRPAHY AND FLUID COMPUTING

CONCEPTUAL BASE

Working regularly with scientific institutes, private and public archives, and activist groups, Simona Deaconescu and her collaborators invite the audience to expand their vision of the body, to perceive it as a territory within which multiple identities reside and plural universes meet. Described as “a captivating exploration of the complex nature of human identity” (Elena Angelova, Scenart), her docufiction performative works challenge how we perceive our bodies in relation to nature, history, and technology.

Ioana Vreme Moser’s celebrated water-based sculptures, “Fluid Memory” and “Fluid Alphabet”, explore “an alternative form of computer based on a forgotten technology and, with it, a new narrative of our future” (Diane Pricop, Obsolete). In her practice, water becomes a source of memory and knowledge. Ecological forms for computation are essential for understanding the natural world. The natural wavy movement of water inspires Ioana to create sculptural installations in which computing is based on streams, a critical response to the binary technological vision of today. Ioana studies hybrid bodies, which she calls fluid agents, in which the water dances at different speeds.

Working within the Tangaj Collective’s framework, their new collaborative project proposes a performance inspired by the question of feminist writer Neimanis Astrida: “What are the political implications of the movement of water?”

Through this new work they respond to key questions about water politics by proposing a more than human, ecofeminist view of water as a source of knowledge instead of an economic resource. As Neimanis Astrida mentions in her book “Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology”, “changing how we think about bodies means changing how we think about water”.

FUTURE MORPHOLOGIES

REASEARCH

Although our human skin feels like a shell protecting our organs, we connect with the planetary hydrocommons through the fluids we leek into the world — pee, sweat, sebum, spit, blood, and tears. We extend our borders and become trans-corporeal beings, living with other bodies of water.

We can look at the global ocean as a single system, similar to a body; all the water flows through it. The water’s surface is like the ocean’s skin, with currents acting as vessels transporting blood and the various zones and layers resembling organs. Surface currents constantly travel – very slowly – they are massive, with a slow and steady pace. In the northern hemisphere, they rotate clockwise. In contrast, in the southern hemisphere, they rotate counterclockwise due to the Earth’s rotation around its axis. The water from the depths moves even more slowly and sometimes travels in the opposite direction to the surface. The North Pacific, the ocean at the end of the world, is where water rises back to the surface.

What imbalances the million-year choreography of water?

To reflect upon that question the artists envision reflexive futurologist interaction between four dancers and a series of small saltwater-based glass sculptures. Ioana’s sound-generating sculptures use recirculated water as their only energy source. With a fluidic morphology, they encapsulate and set in motion the different substances and matters that connect the seawater with our bodies. 

Sound travels four and a half times faster and a hundred times farther in water than in air. Low sounds travel the farthest, while high-pitched sounds dissipate very quickly. Most marine animals are disturbed by the sounds of ships, leading to their death because they use sound as a communication system to obtain food. Most of us know that sound is used as echolocation, but few know that underwater creatures hear the world differently through bone conduction. The bony skeletons of animals pick up the pressure waves of sound traveling through water and transmit them to the inner ear.

Inspired by this research the performance features four dancers in a constant flow of movement, generating sounds by touching or blowing into small water-based sculptures. One example is that dancers use transparent sculptures as sound instruments. For instance, a water-based flute could become an instrument of sound composition for dancers to perform on stage.

A diverse array of techniques, including contact microphones and other advanced methods, are used to capture these sounds in real-time. The resulting sonic elements are woven into an immersive soundtrack, composed by Simina Oprescu, blending the physicality of the performance with the fluidity of sound.

The world beneath the oceans is the closest thing to extraterrestrial worlds. The abyssal body is intriguing. Often, the creatures of the deep waters have been called monsters because of their sizes and the strange shapes they take. They can range in size from microscopic forms to giants. Many live for hundreds of years without light and with very few food sources. To survive, animals in the deep oceans use camouflage as their primary method of protection, as well as transparency, reflective surfaces, dark coloration, and visual mimicry. They all follow Kleiber’s law – the larger they are, the less energy they need to survive.

Deep sea creatures possess the power to regenerate, thrive with minimal resources, and become one with the ecosystem. They move very slowly, only when necessary to conserve energy. When they do, it’s with remarkable speed, similar to a sprint. Deeper, in the bathypelagic zone, creatures no longer require eyes, and their heads grow considerably due to the absence of light. 

Thus, water becomes mythology, habitus, biofuel, and memory. The choreography of water becomes the choreography of life on planet Earth and the choreography of fluids in our bodies. The complex connection between the three is the core of the piece.

MOVING INTO THE PUBLIC SPACE

IN SITU DEVELOPMENT

The development of The Choreography of Water into a site-specific performance responds critically to Astrida Neimanis’ assertion that “water provides a material map of our multivalent forms of marginality and belonging.“ As both a life-giving substance and a deeply politicized element, water exists at the intersection of human and non-human agency, its flows shaped by infrastructural, economic, and ecological interventions. In extending this performance into public spaces near bodies of water, we engage directly with these political and ecological tensions, highlighting how redirecting water streams alters not only the physical environment but also the symbolic and material choreography of water itself.

Neimanis’ concept of “political locality” offers a crucial framework: water is never neutral. Its flows embody histories of colonization, privatization, and extraction, shaping landscapes and bodies alike. By bringing this performance into spaces such as rivers, lakes, or deltas, we position water as a collaborator, a witness, and a medium through which human and non-human relations can be reimagined.

This situational context allows the performance to ask: what futures can we imagine if we shift from dominating water to choreographing with it?

The integration of fluid computing and water-based sculptures with human movement is not merely aesthetic; it is an ontological proposition. The sculptures, powered by recirculated water, act as agents of sound and memory, illustrating Neimanis’ call to embrace the hydrocommons—a relational understanding that dissolves the boundaries between bodies and waters. In this choreography, fluid agents (dancers, sculptures, sound) embody a speculative Symbiocene, a counterpoint to the Anthropocene, where cooperation rather than control defines human-water relations.

Bringing these fluid agents into the public sphere allows us to create a circular dramaturgy that mirrors the hydrological cycle, connecting the macro (global water systems) to the micro (intracellular flows). This resonates with Neimanis’ critique of anthropocentrism, as it repositions the human body not as the central actor but as one node in a vast, interconnected network of watery relations.

By situating the work in the middle of life itself, undressed from conventions of the theatrical black box, we hope to confront audiences with the often invisible infrastructures that govern water flows—canals, dams, and urban drainage systems—and their socio-political implications. This creates a participatory experience that challenges viewers to reflect on their complicity in these systems and to imagine alternative ways of living with water.

Our artistic team itself embodies the themes of movement, transformation, and fluidity that the piece explores. As a group of women who have relocated from our places of birth to live and work transnationally, we are acutely aware of the complexities of displacement, adaptation, and cross-cultural exchange. This migratory experience informs our approach to The Choreography of Water as we explore how water—like human and more-than-human identity—permutates across boundaries, carrying traces of its journeys. Consistent with this dynamic, we aim to position our personal histories within the performance’s broader exploration of water as both a connective and disruptive force.

Furthermore, we believe that going into the public space democratizes access to the performance, aligning with the In Situ Platform’s goals of fostering community engagement and challenging traditional notions of art. By embedding the performance in the everyday flow of urban and natural spaces, we disrupt the boundaries between art and life, making visible the entanglements between water, ecology, and society. In reimagining the choreography of water, this project does not propose a return to a mythical, untouched nature but instead envisions a future where water is understood as a collaborator and co-creator. By examining how our redirection of water streams modifies its choreography, the performance foregrounds the urgency of rethinking our relationship with this elemental force. 

Through this philosophical and embodied inquiry, The Choreography of Water seeks to shift the paradigm from extraction to care, from domination to cohabitation. The work situates itself as both a critique and a proposition, asking what kind of futures can emerge if we listen to water and let its flows guide our movements—both as individuals and as a collective.

MEET THE MAKERS

BIOGRAPHIES
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SIMONA DEACONESCU

Born in Romania in 1987, Simona Deaconescu is a choreographer and filmmaker based in Bucharest.

She examines social constructs, bridging fiction and objective reality. Her work delves into critical scenarios of the body while speculating on its role in past and future societies. She often works collectively, either in interdisciplinary groups or in creative duos. In her art, the performative meets the cinematic in spaces where nature, history, and technology converge, expanding the notion of choreography beyond the human body.

She studied choreography at the National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest and film directing at the Media University of Romania.

She has been developing her work in innovation and research-based networks such as Moving Digits, MODINA, biofriction, and Forecast, and she was awarded twice as an Aerowaves Artist, in 2018 and 2022, and once as a Moving Balkan Artist in 2025.

In 2014, Simona founded Tangaj Collective, a transdisciplinary production company working with artists and researchers. Their creations span performances, installations, films, and videos that reached audiences across the Balkans and Eastern Europe, British Columbia, Mexico, and Madagascar.

“From historic dance pandemics to microbiology, it seems no subject is too complex or challenging for the choreographer—and if there’s any fervor here, it’s for new creation and innovating the form.”

Janet Smith, Stir Arts & Culture Vancouver, 2024

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Ioana Moser

IOANA VREME MOSER

Born in Romania in 1994, Ioana Vreme Moser is a sound artist based in Berlin, engaged in hardware electronics, speculative research, and tactile experimentation.

In her practice, she uses rough electronic processes to obtain different materialities of sound. She places electronic components and control voltages in situations of interaction with her body, organic materials, lost and found items, and environmental stimuli. From these collisions, synthesized sounds emerge to carry personal narrations and observations on the history of electronics, their production chains, wastelands, and entanglements in the natural world.

She holds a BA in Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Design, Graphics Department in Timisoara, Romania, and received an Erasmus Scholarship at the Faculty of Intermedia / Jan-Matejko-Akademy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Poland. She lectured at Tangible Music Lab, Kunstuniversität Linz, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Washington, HFK, University of the Arts Bremen, and Musik Academy Krakow Studio for Electroacoustic Music.

Amongst others, she has performed and exhibited at the National Gallery of Denmark (DK), Fonderie Darling (CA), singuhr (DE), Akademie der Künste Berlin (DE); Manifesta 14 (XK); SFX Sound Effects Seoul (KR), Ars Electronica (AT), Bunkier Sztuki Gallery Krakow (PL); Simultan Festival (RO); Eigen+Art Lab – Transmediale, Berlin (DE).

“Ioana Vreme Moser invites us to pause and be aware of the fragility of our existence. She encourages us to listen to and respect our own slow but stable rhythm, like that of a resilient nature.”

Diane Pricop, Obsolete, 2024

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SIMINA OPRESCU

Simina Oprescu, born in 1993, is a Romanian composer of electroacoustic music and sound artist based in Berlin, Germany, submersing herself in the intricacies of sound’s acoustic and spectral properties. Her compositions embrace a diverse array of instruments, spanning from analog synthesizers to computer music or string instruments. Simina employs acoustic artifacts from physical or natural spaces as recordings, showcasing techniques cultivated through an investigative electroacoustic composition approach. Her exploration takes her deep into structures and phenomena, weaving potent yet nuanced harmonic narratives influenced by psychoacoustics, consciousness studies, spatial arts, and theoretical or physical sound-sculpture installations.

Her work was presented in numerous festivals, music/radio platforms, galleries and museums, collaborating with various international video artists, and her sound compositions were exhibited in EVA International | Ireland’s Biennial, Museum Tinguely (Basel), Märkisches Museum (Berlin), Palmer Gallery (London), Art Encounters Foundation, MOTA Museum (Ljubljana), n.b.k Berlin, Hošek Contemporary, Suprainfinit Gallery (Bucharest), MARe museum Bucharest (Museum of Recent Art), SONICA, Cynetart, Rokolectiv, Simultan or ORF musikprotokoll and having her work mentioned in various magazines, like Positionen Berlin or The Wire. Her releases include work on the Swiss label Hallow Ground. In 2020 she was selected to be part of the SHAPE+ platform artist roster.

“Her music is fascinating and makes you consider the relationship between yourself and the sounds that surround you, how you interact with them and react to them, where they touch you the most, how and why.”

Will Pinfold, Spectrum Culture, 2024

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