Augu un ūdens aģence latviešu pirts rituālos: domāt kopā ar Ivetas Gabalinas fotoprojektu “Riti raiti rīta rasa”

In the article, we think with the art project Roll, Roll, Morning Dew (2019-ongoing) by Lavian photographer Iveta Gabaliņa. We trace the artistic enactment of vegetal and water agencies in the project’s photographs, performances and installations, which encourages us to rethink the constitution of human-environment relationships in Latvian sauna rituals. In our analysis, we aim to showcase Latvian sauna tradition as an example of situated knowledge that engenders the enchantment of the world and fosters care-centered relationship with body and by extension – by nature too, being the precondition of building a more sustainable and liveable future. We outline the older, pre-Christian genealogies of human-nature relationships that inform sauna traditions, as well as ponder upon their healing and reviving effects, to which both water and plants that participate in the rituals are of crucial importance. By drawing from new materialist and feminist outlook and the method of creative critical genealogy that includes thinking with and along art, we conclude that Iveta Gabaliņa’s photo project frames Latvian traditional sauna as an encounter with more-than-human that is mediated by the transcorporeal experience of the materiality and processuality of the lived body.