Paper short abstract:

Sparked by the encounter with a glacier lagoon in Andalucía and the classical Arab archive, we attempt to weave an audiovisual speculative conversation on the memory of water, Islamic water symbolism, and present-day caring practices in the fragile territory of Southern Spain.

Paper long abstract:

This is a conversation between two Mexican researchers studying water as a disputed material-discursive entanglement. Departing from the improbable encounters with a dying glacier lagoon in Sierra Nevada in Andalucía, and the classical Arab heritage, this conversation explores watery alter-imaginaries (Neimanis, 2018) and unlikely collaborations to be found in between two seemingly distant worlds. In doing so, we attempt to weave an affective, critical and speculative conversation around the historical archives of Islamic and Arab imaginary and thinking with water, specifically in Al-Andalus, and the day to day experiences and concerns of people trying to revive the seemingly lost memory of water in present-day Andalucía. “Holding still” our subject of study —water—, we attempt to cross back and forth in-between worlds, memories, affects, geographies and times, and our own seemingly out of place embodiments, to speculate on the (im)possibility of building relations of care and radical collaboration with bodies of water in a severely damaged territory. Presented as an audiovisual conversation, we interrogate the possibility of distant, yet partially touching, worlds to learn from each other ways of attending and caring for waters.