Parts of Your Body Are Scattered in Water All Over the Earth

In Parts of Your Body Are Scattered in Water All Over the Earth (2016), Johnson speaks on the phone with a former student as he walks along the floor of Providence Canyon’s, relaying his observations about the movement of soil across park boundaries by water. To create the video, which takes its name from a passage in Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir The Chronology of Water,  Johnson never physically returned to Providence Canyon, instead embracing this disconnect, relating it to the desire for shared experiences and the malleability of queer identity. This video views site as part of a larger web of disembodied associations that constitutes subjective experience and Johnson combines visuals of the canyon, a cover from The Ladder (a publication by the lesbian organization Daughters of Bilitis), and the artist’s own letters to a former lover and collaborator.

For more information on the Daughters of Bilitis, click here.