The artist Bárbara Campos-Fonseca, sister of the composer, writes: “It is essential to understand that life is futile. There is magic in the never ending cycle of life and death, deaths and resurrections. Life begins and evolves in multiple different shapes: fragrant flowers, fast animals, tiny bacteria cruising along infinite oceans and, like stigmatised martyrs, all those creatures are destined to die. Death is essential for the creation of new life. Eternity is an absurd fantasy, a pompous and satirical Sci-fi tale. Organic matter sacrifices itself for the benefit of what is coming after. Without death there is no evolution, nor adaptation. Eternity feeds on what is intrinsically perishable.”

The composer proposes a journey where the listener is invited to immerse and let be carried away by the flow of forces that humanity cannot control, forces that decompose and mutate in the face of human depredation and extraction.

Campos-Fonseca explains:

Quesintuu and Umantuu, listening to hybrid beings that inhabit a lake at the top of the Andes… Kä Nague, according to the Ngäbe-Buglé people, a vortex of water that leads us to parallel universes between lives and deaths… Refuge, in the wetlands, interspecies crochet next to the infinite ocean... The Sphinx, in the garden of Enlightenment, contemplating the decomposition of human civilization, Sisyphus, in Creation without tomorrow... in the end, only the vital noise of the machines and the cosmos…, which, as Inger Christensen wrote:

“som dybet løfter vandet
op til en kilde
løfter døden de levende
op for at drikke”

[just as the depth raises the water
towards a spring
death raises the living
for to drink]

It's The Revenge of the Water.


In this album Susan Campos-Fonseca brings together an extraordinary group of musicians and artists from Costa Rica, who materialize this journey: David Saravia-Bolivar (pianist), María Clara Vargas Cullell (harpsichord player), Luis Alfaro Bogantes (horn player), Juan Alfaro, aka. Melómana Distorsión (sound artist), Orquesta sinfónica de la Universidad de Costa Rica [Symphony Orchestra of the University of Costa Rica] conducted by Alejandro Gutiérrez, and artist José Pablo Ureña. They are accompanied by Colombian-Newyorker composer, pianist and multimedia artist, Julián De La Chica, who also collaborates in the sound design of the album.

Susan Campos Fonseca, PhD.