Watching Water
Watching Water
A 24-hour participatory performance on Portreath Beach in Cornwall, UK, 2008-Ongoing Research

Dawn breaks and a lone woman saunters onto the beach walking directly towards the water pausing just at the water’s edge. As the water recedes, she takes a few steps to follow it, as if she were about to enter the water. Then pauses. The next wave arrives and she takes a few steps backwards, again staying close to the white foamy line. Over the next 24 hours she is joined by small groups and whole classes of schoolchildren, mothers, the elderly and teens. Moving in unison, they create an undulating, repetitive movement, which forms a living drawing of the line where the water meets the land. 

Watching Water is a participatory performative artwork conceived by US artist Nancy Murphy Spicer during the time when she was based in England for six years. This performance work invites participants to embody the movement of the tides within a collective experience, joining community with the natural landscape, over a 24-hour period.

This work brings together many concerns of the artist such as physical approaches to drawing, artworks created collaboratively through participation, and the power of community connected to place, be it urban spaces or the natural world. This work raises important questions such as: What constitutes drawing? Where does authorship reside when an artwork is created through public participation? How can art be used to bring attention to important social issues?

Watching Water has been in development since 2007. The performance has been tested in both the UK and US with a limited number of participants. It is the artist’s ambition to produce a large-scale version of the performance in the dramatic setting of the North Cornish Coastline. The location of Portreath is ideal because of its unique geography – broad sandy beach with cliffs rising on one side – providing a natural stage for the performative and sculptural nature of the artwork.