Hello there
Can you feel me?
I’m not sure if you can see the same as I see you
I wonder if I’m allowed to look at you like this
Am I intruding in your space?
You just wanted to drift around in your lake
Now you're swimming under the microscope in the lab
Blurry images
Focusing on the creatures
My hands move the dish
Everything is in motion
Standing still for a while
Until the next Copepod swims through
Pushing the water
Creating tiny tumults
So tiny
Barely visible to the naked eye
Yet so crucial in our Planetary system
I wonder how it feels to drift around
To be so tiny and powerful
Your name, literally meaning drifting in Greek
Can I learn this from you?
To let myself drift a bit more?
The opaque water layers
Mixing with the waves
Touching my skin
Feeling the fresh water running down my hands as I pull out the filter
The droplets are dripping out of the container
Returning in the lake
Returning you to the waters
Emptying the valve into the plastic tube
Capturing the remains of the filter
Taking you away from your habitat
How long would you have lived today?
Dividing at nighttime
Multiplying your population
In what reality do you live?
Can you feel me?
Can you sense my presence?
I didn’t see you first
Swimming in your habitat
Seeing you little creatures suddenly so big
So beautiful
Perfect shapes
Slowly appearing as I focus the image
The colors take shape
The forms appear
The creatures come to live again
The galaxy-like images
Milky ways of planktonic beings
Forming an opaque universe
Drifting within the currents
I imagine something about you
Looking with my eyes
From above
In the microscope
Names
Trying to determine who you are
Is it relevant?
Do I need to know?
The magic of this world I’m discovering
Intertwines with my senses
Playing around with realities
Your life is so short
Yet so much more important in planetary cycles
How does a day feel to you?
Like a lifetime to us?
I move you around in the petri dish
Mixing the samples
Destroying your habitat even more
Your waters felt different before, no?
When I’m immersed in the water bodies
Surrounded by you
Do I look at you differently?
Do you feel me?
Do you see me?
Do you sense my body?
During the project week at Eawag, I became drawn to the hidden worlds of plankton. On a field trip to the research station at the Greifensee, we collected them in small plastic flasks, tiny vessels holding drifting lives. Their crucial yet so fragile presence stirred questions of captivity — of what it means to gaze at more than human beings, knowing that to observe them may also mean witnessing their end.
The microscope revealed itself as both a window and a threshold. Through shifting focus, these lives appeared and disappeared, unfolding in delicate layers, fleeting overlaps, and dissolving moments of light. What emerged was not only a vision of the creatures themselves but also of the spaces between — the fragile edges where perception, attention, and life touch.
This work is an attempt to drift closer, to dwell with these beings in their ephemerality. The video gathers microscopic still and moving images alongside underwater footage captured while swimming, weaving together bodies of water, light, and life into an immersive space. Text enters as a live reading with the visuals, a reflection that moves among them — searching for beauty in impermanence, and asking how we might encounter the more-than-human otherwise.
