Requiem for a River features a participatory performance and installation unravelling the geopolitical dominance of the hydropower dam: a border of conquest and control asserting power over shared water resources. Impounding water to generate electric power, these water infrastructures dictate the social and economic fate of downstream countries on the Mekong River.

Working with various bodies of clay and a system of 12 individual modular moulds, allowing multiple configurations to form a collection of vessels and water pitchers, the performance guides participants into the process of ceramic slip casting as a medium to record and embody the imperial dominance of the dam. In doing so, it reveals the dam’s effects on altering natural phenomena such as drought, flooding and sedimentation impacting the precarious landscapes and native populations of the Mekong Delta.