SPEAKING WATERS
A Solo Immersion Residency / Retreat for Creatives in Nature
Oh Water, oh Water, I listen for your guidance between my thoughts ......
Speaking Waters is a Field-Lab for professional Artists, Scientists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers offering solo immersions. A unique practice of silence and solitude for creative inspiration, research and personal development in nature. Founded by Mark Parrish (experiential artist and founder of Brooklyn's PointB Worklodge art residency).
We are currently excepting a limited number of applications for 3 Day or 10 Day Solo Immersions, from Spring to Fall 2025.
Creatives will spend their days and nights in the specially Parrish-designed portable research vessel, the “Unitat”, as well as settling into the surrounding meadow, woods and creek of the Speaking Waters site.
Vision / Mission
The vision of this project is to offer a solo time and space experience that invites humans to see themselves as part of nature and nature as a part of themselves.
Grounds / Creek
Located Upstate New York, north of the Catskills on Crumhorn Mountain in the heart of the Susquehanna River Valley has been home to the Haudenosaunee (Native American) Tribes. It’s with the energy of this land and history of its peoples Speaking Waters hopes to enable creatives to immerse themselves through on-site experimentation and peer-to-peer exchange.
A Message from Mark
My own personal quest for meaning has led me to sacred sites around the world, to explore shamanism, and practice meditation. I know I am not alone in this, I have met many on their own path of discovery. The unseen which binds us all is understood in many ways, by some as spiritual, others energetic and others the stuff of quantum physics. Singular molecules of water make up the grandeur of the whole ocean.
As an urbanite, I have at times felt isolated, frenetic in motion and surrounded by technological noise. By stepping out of this environment into nature, I have had an opportunity to experience myself as I truly am, part of a much larger organism. I have found myself being accepted by my surroundings as much as my surroundings have been accepted and internalized by me. The Unitat project satisfies the need to share what I’ve found.
My vision of this project is to offer a solo time and space experience that invites humans to see themselves as part of nature and nature as a part of themselves.
I have been inspired to create the Unitat so that others may have a way to see separateness collapse and unity emerge. Living in the canopy layer of the trees for even three days opens up a feeling of confidence and security that can breed inspiration and channel the artistic spirit. The Unitat user can focus more clearly, as it can become a meditative place, taking this from merely a social, architectural project into a spiritual one. We 'return to nature', experiencing ourselves as whole and complete with all that is, a merging of self with a higher/super-consciousness.
Mark Parrish
