Small scale studies: Dear water,

A two-kilometre stretch of popular beach in central Limassol and the only swimming area administered by the municipality, Akti Olympion is deeply affected by marine pollution. It is also where I first learned to swim.

Between the summers of 2021 and 2022, I explored this coastline as both an intimate site and a contested ecological zone. My research focused on how pollution materializes in the seascape—often invisibly—and becomes perceptible through signs of its consequences: sea foam, occasional dead fish, or the decline of native urchins.

Approached through the lens of slow violence, “environmentally catastrophic acts low in instant spectacle but high in long-term effects"*, this video work marks the first iteration of an ongoing project. It interweaves personal footage and reflections from this familiar bay with voices of those connected to it through their professional or daily practices, making visible the underestimated forms of harm that entangle human and more-than-human bodies and these waters.

*Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).