New Waters: Robel Temesgen and Glomma is a sub-project within the larger framework of Practising Water: Rituals and Engagements. It asks what it means to form relationships with unfamiliar bodies of water and how such encounters reshape our understanding of material, memory, and spirituality. In November 2023, parchment books, including a 78-meter leporello, were entrusted to the Glomma River, linking the river’s course to the Guttormsgaard Archive. The gesture drew inspiration from an Ethiopian story in which prayer books offered to the source of the Blue Nile returned untouched, an act interpreted as divine acknowledgment.

In Blaker, this gesture was re-enacted with Glomma, yet the river’s response differed. The books, immersed in the current for five months, emerged transformed. This transformation became both material and symbolic, revealing water’s agency as co-creator and storyteller.

The project situates the river as a co-maker in acts of transmission and change, reflecting on what it means to greet a “new” water through ritual and trust. The work also forms a dialogue between the Glomma River, the Guttormsgaard Archive, and the Ethiopian manuscript tradition, bridging local and ancestral waters.

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