We mobilise people and resources to create, curate, make sense of and use knowledge to inform policymaking across Europe.
Pollution, contamination, forever chemicals…What have we done?! OMG! I need a glass...
Welcome to the Haunted Waters Bar—a growing collection of contaminated waters. Here, you'll find a menu featuring a variety of water samples from around the world, submitted by activists, scientists, swimmers, citizens, and friends. Some samples come from lakes, rivers, and the sea, while others are filled from the tap. While they may all look similar, each water is haunted by a multitude of 'spirits' telling different stories—stories that speak of the past, of decisions made by those in power, of struggles, accidents, wars, greed, and action.
Chemicals in water are not unlike ghosts – they haunt and alter beings and places, are often invisible to the naked eye, relate to historic injustice, and are trapped in places they were not meant to be. The complexity of chemical cocktails hinders research on their negative impact on health and environment. The destruction of ecosystems and disruption of communities conjures these eerie beings into existence; the spirits have awakened!
How do we live with haunted waters?
Installation view Haunted Waters Bar
More information: Haunted Water Samples, Spirits, Menu
Life in our times entails an apparent dissolution of the proper separation of things. What emerges in this crisis is an uncanny eeriness; sunbathing reminds us of global warming, breathing city air of pollution, and drinking water of contaminants. Unseen anthropogenic entities are haunting our experience. The ghosts of the Anthropocene have awakened! Nonhuman Nonsense and Caterina Cacciatori propose a ghost hunt by reimagining water monitoring tools as ghost-hunting equipment. Together with local citizens living at waterways and connecting the world of science and mythology, they will attempt to form a different, closer relationship with these ghostly entities (aka. contaminants), making them a larger part of our concern.
They will conduct research and continue their exploration of contaminants as ghosts, water quality management tools as ghost hunting tools, and engagement of citizens as ghost hunters, connecting the worlds of scientific research and contaminants with mythologies and local communities.
Haunted Waters website
Nonhuman Nonsense is a research-driven design and art studio creating near-future fabulations and experiments somewhere between utopia and dystopia. Caterina Cacciatori is an environmental engineer working on water management. The group first met and connected at the SciArt Summer School on the topic of NaturArchy which took place in June 2022 at the JRC.
The aim of the project for me, of course, is to continue this closer relationship between art and the science, but it is also to bring people closer to the contaminants, to make them understand what is actually in their waters. And just to really stop and reflect, which maybe it won't happen at a bigger scale if only the scientists are involved in the monitoring or if the attention is only drawn when there is an emergency. So we can also maybe trigger a bit of prevention or a preventive attitude towards the contamination that we are creating.
A starting point was to compare these monitoring toolkits to ghost hunting toolkits, because contaminants are also unseen and they're haunting the lands and bodies they're in. And it came about from the feeling of living in these times when a lot of common activities such as drinking water might remind you of pollution, or sunbathing might make you think about global heating. So this feeling that things that before were enjoyable, now there's an eerie feeling that something is going on that we maybe cannot feel it directly, but we know it's going on and it's changing us and the environment.
Presentation of residency at JRC | 17/03/2023
Residency at the JRC Ispra | 13/03/2023 - 17/03/2023
Presentation of Residency | 17/03/2023
Residency at the JRC Ispra | 08/05/2023 - 12/05/2023
Haunted Waters Survey
Haunted Waters workshop | 07/09/2023
Send us your Ghosts in the Waters!
Haunted Waters at European Ocean Days 2025 | 03-07 March 2025
Haunted Waters Catalogue Essay
Artists-in-Residence
Collaborating Researchers & Policymakers
NaturArchy Residencies 2023
NaturArchy Residency Projects
Residency Presentation Recordings
More on NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract
More on Resonances IV
More on the Resonances IV Summer School
04 Feb 2026 | 14 Jul 2026
