No Water in the Moon Seas

2022, audio installation, work-in-progress

The Moon, long perceived as a barren celestial body, paradoxically carries the poetic weight of seas — 43 named expanses that evoke emotional and philosophical states: the Sea of Dreams, the Sea of Clarity, the Sea of Crises. These names, first mapped by Italian scientists Giovanni Ciccioli and Francesco Grimaldi in 1652, originated in a time when the Moon’s surface was imagined as fluid, holding the possibility of actual water. Though science later disproved this notion, the linguistic imprint remained, shaping a mythology of lunar landscapes where absence feels like presence.

Ultimately, the lunar seas, despite their emptiness, embody a collective dream — the persistence of myths, the enduring human tendency to imbue the unknown with meaning. And in this imagined reality, the Moon becomes something more than rock and shadow; it becomes a reflection of the way we shape the cosmos through our desires, histories, and unanswered questions.

authors: Yana Osman, Anton Khamchishkin
illustrations: Peco Barbe (Japan)



As part of the project, the album No Water in the Moon Seas was released