Water as Life

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NASA's Dragonfly mission will land on Titan in 2034, searching for life in the desert of space. The probe will fly to Selk crater, where an ancient impact melted the icy bedrock and created pools that may have lasted thousands of years—water mixing with organics to form what scientists call a "prebiotic soup."

The search for life, reduced to its simplest form, is the search for water. Water, organics, energy: the recipe. On a moon of Saturn, in Berlin-Wedding, in the songs carried around the Great Lakes. Water is the constant.

The walk I return to most: from my studio in Neukölln north to where the Panke meets the Spree. Weichselplatz to Nordhafen. The path crosses territories that don't belong together. Walking stitches them into a single cloth. Both neighborhoods were red—workers' districts, sites of resistance. The water connects what history has separated.

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This is an edge. You may return to the roots:

• Return to the beginning — ways of knowing
• On diaspora — the Astrakhan name, meandering migration
• Water as metaphor — Roni Horn, perpetual relation
• The practice of walking — the line as score

Or circle back:

• The river — where the Panke begins
• Water as intelligence — indigenous knowledge, water as relation