The Watery Commoning
Legal and Artistic Practices at the Limits of Representation
Abstract
This article traces Corpi Idrici, a transdisciplinary artistic research collective formed in Genoa in 2021, through situated practices around the city’s hydrographic infrastructures. At the centre, the Charter of the Rights of Hydro Bodies is conceived as a performative, collective device continuously rewritten through use and situated activation. The Charter remains close to grammar of law while exposing how legal and artistic representation may stabilise, reduce, or betray relations they seek to support. ‘Orthopedics of water’ and lingua franca are ‘fabulative’ tools to question how hydro-social worlds are translated, governed, represented.
Submitted: March 4, 2026 | Accepted: May 27, 2026 | Published Aug. 6, 2026 | Language: en
Keywords Placed-based art research • Situated practice • Charter of the Rights • Hydro bodies • Somatic listening • Orthopedics of waters
Copyright © 2026 Lucia Bergamaschi, Anna Daneri, Nuvola Ravera. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.