This online conversation between artist Niño de Elche and TBA21 assistant curator Marina Avia Estrada took place on July 6, 2022. Their dialogue was part of series of discussion with the artists who participated in “Pasaje del agua | The Journeying Stream,” a three-day program of performances, meditation, and music curated by Sofia Lemos and Daniela Zyman in the city of Córdoba, Spain, on June 3–5, 2022. 

Niño de Elche discusses the process of developing the performance at the Molino de Martos, alluding to the multiple references that have fed this piece. The significations of water and blood, the two main symbolic elements of the performance, are fundamental elements of life that are also loaded with symbolism, evident in the sacred texts of the three major Western monotheistic religions, with a special focus on Catholic imagery. Blood is simultaneously a sign of purification and corruption, energy and violence, and water, which flows through the sound of the performance and is present beneath the thirteenth-century flour mill, carries the capacity for both destruction and creation. The two elements also introduce the idea of sacrifice: sweat, saliva, and blood as the excretions of effort in the sacrifice of work and faith, in the words of the artist.