Day Zero is an exploration of water as a memory, a necessity, and a voice. Audiences step into intimate rooms where water becomes both screen and stage. Through projection ripples across water surfaces, real stories are carried in sound, and touching the water alters the narrative.

Each story discovers a perspective that resonates with listeners, revealing how varied and personal our connections to water truly are.

The journey leads to Cape Town, where “Day Zero” once loomed: a moment when the city nearly ran dry, rationing each resident to 50 liters of water a day. Here, audiences are challenged to inhabit that reality. In small groups, they engage in a balancing game using a manual scale, interactive sensors, and symbolic “water babies,” weighing choices and limits in a tactile reflection of scarcity.

Every completed challenge contributes to a collective archive. The water babies collected over time become living data, a visual record of how people reimagine their daily lives within constraint. In this way, the installation becomes a growing story, written by its audiences, of how we understand and value water.

Premiered at the Helsinki Design Festival in 2024, Day Zero merges art and activism into an experience both intimate and communal. It invites us to look inward, to listen closely, and to consider how the choices we make ripple outward — toward one another, and toward the planet we share.