1. Theophany
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Jorge Villarreal.
What might a river have to say for itself if we knew how to listen?
Theophany draws from the classical Greek term for a concept found across cultures: the manifestation of a deity through phenomena. It can also be understood as a revelation that gestures beyond itself toward a deeper understanding of the nature of all life. The title here offers a lens through which to consider what it might mean to regard the river as the powerful presence that it is, capable of real intervention in the world, both generative and destructive.
In Theophany, you are invited into conversation with the San Antonio River. The exhibition unfolds across image, sculpture, sound, and stone, asking us to reconsider the river not as backdrop, but as speaker.
A 16mm film submerged in the river returns bearing its own image (What the River Says). Interactive sculptures invite the listener to physically resonate their own body to hear long-form compositions created from hydrophone recordings, over a century of USGS river data, and breaths excerpted between speaking and singing (Bodies of Water). These breath fragments echo Yanaguana—the early name for the San Antonio River, often translated as “spirit waters”—and remind us that each exhale returns moisture to the air, folding our bodies back into the water cycle. Silk banners reveal microscopic images of microplastics in the watershed (Phainein), while limestone boulders ground us in the geology of the Edwards Aquifer (Sediment).
Moving across time and material, Theophany is a meditation on the San Antonio River as a witness, participant, and force with agency in the world. Commissioned by Contemporary at Blue Star.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Jorge Villarreal.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Jorge Villarreal.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Elena Peña.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Elena Peña.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Elena Peña.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Elena Peña.
Courtesy of the Contemporary at Blue Star. Photo credit: Jorge Villarreal.
2. Ojo de Agua
Ojo de Agua is a series of two unique compositions meant to be heard both above and below water. "Ojo de Agua: I" is a long-form underwater sound installation. "Ojo de Agua: II" was composed and arranged for the quartet. Both pieces utilized publicly available USGS water data from the San Antonio River and Olmos Creek. Commissioned by and premiered with Agarita.
3. Other Channels
Other Channels explores a history of the Missouri River through a century of USGS water data, historical maps, and community research. Composed and arranged for a non-traditional string quartet from the Omaha Symphony (Violin: Lucy Duke, Cello: InYoung Park, Bass: Bobby Scharmann, Violist: Bozhidar Shopov). The work was performed while cruising the river on an open air boat together with the audience and a panel of locals (featuring Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, Professor and Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nebraska; Jack Phillips, naturalist, poet, nature writer, and founder of The Naturalist School; and Don Moses, retired Civil Engineer, U.S.). World premiere commissioned by Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.
4. Sono/Aqua
Sono/Aqua utilizes a system pioneered by Botello that activates and amplifies the resonant frequency of water in real-time; a swimming pool "sings" out its vibration, and simultaneously activates standing waves and harmonic nodes above and below water. While immersed, bodies become live nodes -- audibly affecting and altering the frequency of the pool. Participants hear through their bone structures; tuning in to engage differences in aurality between air and water, cochlear and bone, active and receptive, solo and communal. Each movement affords a new listening experience, and the audience is encouraged to explore freely as they co-compose alongside the water. World premiere commissioned by MATA for the 20th Annual MATA Festival.
5. Yanaguana Frictions
Yanaguana Frictions is a large-scale immersive installation reflecting on the 12,000+ year material and cultural history of the San Antonio River. Botello engineered seven sculptures out of Bexar-county limestone and glass that resonate recordings made with a hydrophone from several significant sites along the River — at the Headwaters/Blue Hole, the Pump House at Brackenridge Park, the heart of the Riverwalk, the water-powered grain mill at Mission San José, and the Espada Dam/acequia. Also featured — a community gathered multi-voice choral work (composed in Nahuatl, Spanish, German, and English; edited to amplify only the breaths between singing and speaking; engineered to sound through the walls of the site), field recordings of local cicadas, a digital projection of 16mm film (submerged blank into the River for the water to develop the reel), objects collected from walks along the 240 mile length of the River (petrified wood, clay pottery shards, glass, rusted metal, barbed wire), a ceramic sculpture of St. Anthony ("San Antonio"), limited edition zines, and prints of film stills. Commissioned by S.M.A.R.T. for their SA 300 San Antonio Tricentennial Celebration Residency.
