Art, in all the wrong places

"Water used to have no taste. That's what the Elders say, and that's the hardest thing to believe. In a future Sardinia where every surface water is alkaline and corrosive, a young woman leaves the underground vault at dawn, before the UV peaks. She is looking for something. She has rope, smoked glass, and not much else."

Bitter Water is a dystopian tale of hope and magic amidst the desolate landscape of the Molentargius Lagoon, which is said to be inhabited by monstrous beings and, perhaps, by sublime creatures as well, which could be the same being.

Enter the sonic experience of a post-apocalyptic Sardinia.

Created, spoken, produced, edited and mixed by M. Cristina Marras for The Water Library, a storytelling project about water by Irish audio producers Zoë Comyns and Regan Hutchins.



Flamingo Lore
Flamingo Lore is an ongoing body of work set in a dystopian Sardinia where the surface is salt, acid water, and UV, and humans live underground. The world is consistent across pieces, but each work is an independent entry point — a different voice, a different moment in the same collapsed future.

Across the work, flamingos shift roles: they appear as myth and salvation, as creatures of impossible beauty the survivors risk their lives to find, and — in other corners of the universe — as rulers and torturers in an improbable RPG, wielding power over what remains of human life.
I have always been fascinated by the apparent fragility but effective strength of flamingos, the only living creatures that can drink water close to boiling point, among other things.

I live in Cagliari, surrounded by pink flamingos.


What is Art, in all the wrong places?

Characters who can't always be trusted. Because they often don't see the difference between sound and noise, between countryside and abandoned building, between fiction and reality.
I explore sound, speak languages and talk to strangers. This is my work.
AIR Member. www.cristinamarras.com

I've heard it from the Elders, inside the vaults, how this land, once called Sardinia, used to have a fertile valley called Campidano, and water-streams with enough water to make the fields abundant with fruits. Water that you could drink. Water that wasn't bitter. The Elders say it had no taste at all, and I find that the hardest thing to believe.
The Elders tell many stories about a sturdy wood that they called olive tree, a wood that on this ancient land could live for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, and gave a fruit filled with a mysterious, golden syrup that they called oil. They tell these stories when we are huddled around the heat generator, wrapped in our hypothermia blankets, down in the vault, and I don't know if I can believe everything they say. Maybe they sometimes mistake memories of the past with the visions of the future.
But we all listen.
They say that right here, where we live underground today, the land on the surface was once green and rich, yielding fruits you could eat straight off the tree, even freshly picked. The Elders say the juice ran down your hands and you licked it off, and it was sweet, and it was nothing like the tablets we eat now. And it was possible to walk without protection, even barefoot, if you wanted, and the land wasn't divided just by expanses of salt and bitter water, but there were these things called ponds, and hills and plains, and mountains and valleys.
The Elders say that here, precisely above where we live now, there used to be a huge lagoon that people called Molentargius, and that the lagoon was filled with beautiful pink animals, tall, majestic, and they called them phoenicotterius. They stood in the water of the lagoon, still as statues, their long neks bent to the water, and they were so beautiful that you felt a shiver in your bones. And only rarely would they rise in the sky in flocks that were called flamboyance, and if you had the fortune to see them fly in the sky, their immense pink wings, with black tips underneath, the flamboyance was magical and if you expressed a wish, any wish, it would come true.
I don't know if I can truly believe everything they tell, but I have to try.
No one saw me when I snuck out of the vault, I'm sure.
I left when the UV rays still weren't burning skin, and I want to walk, walk until I cannot turn back. I've brought enough provisions to reach the white formations, and I've worn protections to cross the liquid expanse, so that my skin is not corroded by the alkaline water.
I've brought a long rope and an iron hook, because beneath the salt crust there are treacherous quicksands that immobilise you.
I have also a piece of smoked glass, because the salt blinds you and drives you mad if you're not careful, and the slabs swallow you if you're not quick.
Ferocious beasts roam the bitter water that covers everything above — beasts that quench their thirst by inhaling acid fumes, the same fumes that wiped out all the green and the other magical things the Elders talk about.
The Elders say they thrive in the sulfureous ponds, with their feet perpetually immersed in that venomous water that burns our skin, their eyes milky and wide, blind to everything the Elders remember.
I'm not afraid. I will find the magical phoenicotterius, and they will save me.