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Ei Arakawa-Nash
Does This Kanal Taste Ambivalent?
Kanal's public spaces include drinking fountains that are free to use during the building's opening hours. Two are installed near the Welcome room. At Ei Arakawa-Nash's request, one has been professionally fitted with an additional water-filtration system. Visitors may notice a difference in taste between the fountains, whether or not they are aware of the intervention. Neither fountain is identified as the filtered one.
- As part of
- Protocols for opening the museum
- Date
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- Location
- Welcome Room
The work builds on the artist's performance Does This Soup Taste Ambivalent? from 2014, in which their mother prepared soup using vegetables grown in Fukushima Prefecture, the region affected by Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster. Although food-safety tests conducted before the performance confirmed that the produce was safe to eat, participants were nevertheless confronted with the question of whether they felt comfortable consuming it.
At Kanal, Arakawa-Nash turns this inquiry towards water and Brussels' fraught relationship with its waterways, including the canal from which the museum takes its name. Visitors are invited to compare the two fountains and notice their differences. One fountain has been altered through a filtration system that removes calcium and magnesium, yet both remain perfectly safe to drink. Rather than presenting one type of water as superior, the work asks how taste is shaped, suggesting that sensory experience – and the ways people consume art – is never entirely neutral but continually informed by perception, expectation and judgement.
This commission forms part of How to open, the first year of Protocols for opening the museum, a three-year inquiry into what it means for a new museum in Brussels to be truly open, welcoming and public.
Credits and bios
- Artist
