The Water Library is a new touring audio installation where objects on shelves tell stories about water around the world.
It will be launched at the HearSay Audio Arts Festival in Kilfinane, Co. Limerick this week.
Co-creators Zoë Comyns and Regan Hutchins have curated a series of stories by writers, story-tellers and audio makers who recorded short pieces. They drew inspiration from all watery quarters - from a river, lake, pond, puddle, leaky tap, giant flood, ocean, wave, drought, thirst, bodily fluids or even a teardrop.
Audio pieces include interviews, scripts, poetry, song or story or a short feature with multiple voices. These stories range from lyrical writing celebrating the natural world to soundworks addressing the urgent climate crisis and intimate sound studies about our bodies.
In Pelican Blood, writer Layla O'Mara charts having to pour 30 bottles of frozen breast milk down the drain after a storm knocked out her water and power for several days.
K Angel's short piece is a recording of two thirty-something genderqueer friends taking a bath together in East London; listeners can hear how they embraced the awkwardness to experiment with a different kind of platonic intimacy.
The audio makers and writers sent an object related to their story; ideally a small bottle with the water of their story, but the object could also be from the location - a stone, a feather or a mudlarked treasure.
"This installation is a celebration of water and memory through story and sound but also draws attention to climate change, human mismanagement of water and ecological crisis."
When the visitor to the library chooses this object, they pick it up, place it on an electronic pad and they will hear the story (between 1- 3 minutes long) .
Zoë Comyns says 'Many of us are tired of the perpetual scroll on our phones, where we barely remember what we have just seen or heard an hour later. We wanted to create something that allows people to experience and listen in-person. The act of sitting down and choosing an object creates a connection - it makes you listen more closely and we hope, remember the piece you have just heard."
As a visitor to the library, you have no idea what you are going to hear when you pick up a bottle or object, but once the associated audio starts playing you will be transported to an island, a river bed or a coral reef.
Regan Hutchins says "This installation is a celebration of water and memory through story and sound but also draws attention to climate change, human mismanagement of water and ecological crisis. Increased flooding in Ireland is just one consequence of this."
In one of the audio pieces, The Day of the Flood, Dubliner Noel Keegan remembers floods in 2011 that destroyed houses and took lives - in his own Cabra garden the flood swept fish into his house.
In Bitter Water, M. Cristina Marras imagines a future Sardinia where every surface water is alkaline and corrosive."Water used to have no taste. That's what the Elders say, and that's the hardest thing to believe." In this piece 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.
These literary and audio explorations of water, science and climate crisis are intended to inspire respect, wonder and care of our waterbodies.
Zoë & Regan hope to tour the installation in various locations and festivals over the next few years, adding objects and stories to the library.
The HearSay Audio Arts Festival runs May 7th-10th 2026 in Kilfinane, Co. Limerick - find out more here, and find out more about The Water Library project here.
