Apocatastasis Votum

There is an obscure tradition: fill a vessel with water and your wish, wait for the water to evaporate, and the wish will be set free.

Apocatastasis Votum is a nest of ceramic and hypertufa vessels placed on the dock of the Floating University’s retention pond, a body of water that is a hybrid toxic industrial runoff and postapocalyptic protected urban habitat.

The vessels are malformed, unable to hold water. The wish has nowhere to be held.

A central vessel feeds the others through a network of tubes: oxygen and charcoal. It moves without ever leaving the work and never settling inside it.

This is the nature of the post-dystopian wish: a hope that persists despite one knowing that it cannot come true.

Each vessel is a small resonant chamber. Whispers travel the hollow body walls and return slightly changed, as if they were never entirely yours. Every wish joins a chorus of the ones made before it. In this way, the chamber never fully empties.

Apocatastasis is the miracle: the heretical doctrine that everything will be restored, every wound healed, every corruption reversed. Clean water. The pond as it was before. The world as it was before. Votum is the offering placed at the shrine before the miracle. The vow paid to a god who has not yet arrived. Faith that the favour will come. Together, Apocatastasis Votum holds the wish in the condition of permanent almost.

You are invited to bring your wish to the water.