In 2017, the Māori tribe of Whanganui in New Zealand won a 160-year legal battle to grant the Whanganui River legal rights as a person, meaning that harming it is the same as harming the tribe. Since then, similar lawsuits have succeeded around the world in granting legal rights to rivers. 

 These protections are vital for safeguarding these immensely complex habitats that support intricate webs of life. In an ongoing research project, Billy Friebele uses floating waterproof cameras to explore the Anacostia River, which is threatened by pollution from plastics, runoff, chemicals, and high levels of bacteria. This apparatus reveals a mesmerizing, interconnected ecosystem below and above the water surface. The footage acts as a catalyst for his creative process, leading him to discover poetic spaces between humans, technology, and the natural world.

 This exhibition considers the role that technologies play in extending the human sensorium beyond its limits into the complex web of flora and fauna that coexist in rivers. Can we develop kinship with a larger ecological web through the prosthetic digital apparatus, and thereby decenter the human exceptionalism that led us to large-scale environmental degradation?