Mariko HORI
Forever in Different Ways
interactive installation
water, glass, brass, books, paper, cement, seeds, salt, pigment, microbes, corten steel, UHMWPE, stones, and found objects
2026
In the collection of KWR Water Research Institute, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands
Forever in Different Ways is an interactive installation that imagines a world already beyond tipping points, where water no longer behaves as it once did.
On a desolate ground, a slender line traces a slow curve, as if searching for its way. When visitors offer drops of water, the droplets follow the curved path, falling at an unexpected point onto a superhydrophobic glass plate shaped like melting water—an unfamiliar material state whose surface refuses each droplet, sending it away in an unpredictable direction.
(Si–OH)→Si–O–Si(CH3)2
The landscape holds signs of dryness, of something slowly collapsing, and of resilient microbes continuing their invisible labour on the other side. Between them stands a glacier-like mass, gradually shaped by countless droplets. Slowly, the ground records their passage, and eventually — perhaps tomorrow, or a decade from now — it will collapse. This collapse may seem destructive, but it also breaksthe wall that once divided the human world from the more-than-human.
With each attempt, visitors are invited to try again — to follow the droplet’s path, to adjust the angle, the timing, or the rhythm of their offering. The outcome is never fully predictable: many attempts may seem fruitless, sometimes the droplet finds a path to the distant formation. Gradually, the installation becomes a quiet negotiation between human gesture and a landscape that resists, remembers, and transforms.
Developed in collaboration with three scientists from KWR — Peter van Thienen (Decision-Making under Deep Uncertainty/ Deep Adaptation), Maria Lousada Ferreira (Biological wastewater and water treatment), and Elvio Amato (Emerging Contaminants in Water / PFAS) — the work invites us to experience the fragility of this moment, and to reflect on how action, attention, and imagination might still matter, even beyond the point where systems appear to be failing.
Nothing in this world feels eternal — except perhaps PFAS, the “forever chemicals” now found in water, soil, and even our bodies. They do not decay, they do not disappear. They remain as a permanent trace of our time. If there is a kind of “forever” today, it is a forever of pollution.
But what about the forever of water? For a long time, water was seen as endless. In the Netherlands, it seemed abundant: rain fell again and again, cities floated upon canals, farmland lay on wet ground. When you opened a tap, water ran as if it would never end. It was easy to imagine, or to wish, that water was eternal.
As nature and daily life became divided, and values of mass production and efficiency spread, something in us began to dry. Drying is a slow process of aging,of decay, of losing the moisture of imagination and empathy.This desertification of the human mind has been followed by the desertification of landscapes. What happens to us also happens to nature.
Today, under deep uncertainty, water no longer follows the patterns we thought we knew. It seems that water decided to exist elsewhere, in unexpected forms, directions and situations. As water resists, the bonds between things fall apart.
Soils, species, and systems that were once connected through water fragment into fragile pieces. Collapse soon follows.
And yet, life does not end there. Microbes turn what has passed into something new.They clean water, restore balance, and sustain the cycle. Their “forever” is not about staying the same, nor about endless progress, but about continuous adaptation.
In this installation, visitors are asked to offer drops of water into this fragile world.
Each drop is a small act, uncertain, almost useless. Yet with repeated attempts, something can change. Over time, the wall that once stood between human activities and microbial cycles will slowly break, until one day it collapses, leaving behind a new, unknown relation.
This work does not promise control, nor does it romanticize simple acceptance. It is an experiment in staying with deep uncertainty — a way of sensing forever in different ways. It invites us to act not because we know the outcome, but because we still care — even if collapse might come, and much of what is lost will not return in human time.
Each drop of water becomes a gesture of empathy — an attempt to remain part of the cycle, to work for this world as one among many, to imagine that our presence could still matter in the futures that will unfold beyond us.
Created during the artist in residence program
at KWR Water Research Institute, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands
All content © Mariko Hori 2026