About Dehydrated Landguages

Jorge Menna Barreto

Dehydrated Landguages is an artistic and research project conceived and led by Jorge Menna Barreto. Taking aridity as its starting point and unfolding between Brazil and California, the project aims to reflect on the climate crisis and its repercussions in art, literature, and everyday life.

Launched in September 2025, the project’s first phase features the podcast Olho Seco (Dry Eye), a three-part series that invites us to listen with our eyes closed to rethink the ways we see the world in times of environmental emergency. In three episodes, Olho Secoweaves together science, poetry, and the visual arts to explore how the experience of dryness manifests itself in the body and ecosystems. From dry eye syndrome to the arid landscapes of Brazil’s sertão and the Californian deserts—connected by oceanic teleconnections that cross the Pacific—the project brings together tears and rain, corneas and caatinga,^[1]mineral verses and non-retinal images. Amidst the poetry of João Cabral de Melo Neto, interpretations of artworks by Antonio Dias, and the perspectives of scientists, writers, artists, and curators, emerges a sensitive reflection on how “dryness” can be a language, method, and response to environmental collapse.

The second phase of Dehydrated Landguages, due to begin in California in 2026, is kickstarted here by the essay “One Mouth Less,” published here for the first time. In this speculative fiction, there is no promise of rehydration, but rather a denunciation of a collapse already underway: bodies born with hydric mouths—dedicated exclusively to drinking water—watch them decay amidst a scarcity declared a “state of thirst.” The character, unable to drink, transforms into a water vampire, someone who writes while others agonize. Writing appears here not as a salvation, but as a symptom of a radical lack: pages drinking ink while bodies succumb to dryness.

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One Mouth Less

By Jorge Menna Barreto                                    

He had two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears, and two mouths. He used his upper mouth for speaking, singing, and teaching. His lower mouth for eating what the land provided. He had always wondered about having only two mouths in a society where three were the norm.

The third mouth is used for drinking water. Located at hip height, this mouth has no teeth. Its usually full lips fit perfectly over the public taps where people quench their thirst. Not him though. While people drink, he writes.

He was born in the embers of Brazil on August 25, 1984, at 2:55 PM, in the municipality of Mossoró, Rio Grande do Norte. This was the information he used to schedule an appointment with the astrologer. She lived in a liminal zone between the domains of the earth and the domains of thirst. A dilapidated building made of solar panels and worn mirrors. The entrance was a broken clay filter.

“You were born with the Sun in Virgo, you already know that,” she said, without looking at him, her eyes fixed on the blurry screen of a stargazer. “But what interests us isn’t the Sun, which is harmful to you. Always avoid it. What interests us is your Neptune, stuck in the sixth house. This… this isn’t common. It rules your Pisces ascendant.”

She spoke softly, as if talking to the walls.

— Neptune is also the ruler of losses. Of thirsts that are not quenched in the body. The lack they produce is not a static noun. It is more like a vacuum, operating by sucking in its surroundings.

He didn’t answer. His upper mouth closed. His lower one slowly chewed on a lump of something he’d found along the way.

— Your Neptune in the sixth house is being activated by Saturn in transit through Taurus. A functional anomaly. The structure dissolves. Nothing remains fixed. Neither form nor function. This can affect salivary glands, digestive cycles, and the perception of thirst, which is dislocated.

Before saying goodbye, she said one more thing. Quietly, almost to herself:

—Mercury is in the eighth house, together with Pluto. Mercury is the translator, the writer. Pluto, the shadowy star, rules minerals and mysteries. Those with this aspect… squeeze the world to fit on the page. Be careful when the Sun is in Taurus next month, as it will form a dangerous conjunction with Saturn in Taurus. Saturn rules the teeth, and Taurus, the neck.

At the time, he didn’t understand, but he kept writing.

On May 18, 2025, the taps began to fail. They dripped. The public tanks ran dry. The fire hydrants were sealed. The government declared a “state of thirst.”

The water holes became dead weight. Some became inflamed. Others became necrotic inside. People began to rip them out with their bare hands.

Marcel watched. He didn’t sweat. He kept writing.

The following week, the outbreaks began. Bodies were burned in the squares. Children tried to drink sand. Delirious adults dug holes in the sidewalk, sniffing at dry puddles.

He walked the streets as if he were in a blind spot. He was barely noticed. He wasn’t approached. He seemed outside the problem—or part of it.

Some said he carried hidden water within. Others said he was the bearer of thirst itself, an agent of dryness.

On June 12, 2025, he awoke to noises at the door. Hammering. The screams of a group of people carrying a cross and crucifix.

— It’s him. He has the lack. He keeps the thirst.

— Open up! Your water is ours!

He locked the door. He leaned against it. He wasn’t afraid. He knew what he had to do.

The notebook was on the table. He opened it. He ran his fingers over the blank pages, caressing that dry texture he loved so much. He picked up the fountain pen. He began to write.

He described the failing waterspouts. The remaining water holes decaying. The viscous fear of the last drop. The outbursts. The bodies. The voices.

The paper drank in the ink greedily. Within seconds, it was drenched in letters. He drank it all in without pause, intoxicating himself with those sips of reality. A bottomless thirst. A delirium of absorption.

Outside, the screams faded.

Through the window, he saw that the street was empty. The houses were empty, too. The city looked like a sketch. A shallow line on the sandy ground.

He and what he wrote was all that was left.

Paper — his third mouth.

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Jorge Menna Barreto‘s practice explores site-specificity as a constantly evolving relationship between art, ecology, and language. His work stems from a deep listening of materials, stories, and landscapes, fostering collaborations with diverse knowledge and communities. Jorge is a professor in the art department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he teaches the master’s program in environmental art and social practice. He is also a collaborating professor in the graduate arts program at UERJ (Rio de Janeiro State University). For more information: @jmennabarreto and https://jorggemennabarreto.com/

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¹ The caatinga is an exclusively Brazilian, semiarid biome in the Northeast of the country, characterized by a long dry season and a unique, hardy vegetation adapted to arid conditions. Its Tupi-Guarani name means “white forest,” referring to the whitish appearance of its plants during the dry period when they lose their leaves. The caatinga is home to many endemic species, making it a significant center of biodiversity, but it faces threats from human activities and lacks sufficient legal protection.