My Head Makes My Heart Swim is an immersive sonic environment unfolding through movement, resonance, and spatial encounters. Installed within the Cryptoporticus and the Acqua Traiana aqueduct which passes beneath the American Academy building, it activates the architecture as both instrument and body.  

Through layered sonic impressions—real, remembered, and imagined—the work invites heightened awareness of listening as a physical, spatial experience. In the absence of water, sound becomes a medium of immersion where bodies, architecture, and memory converge. It listens across time: to what is present, vanished, and lingers between memory and imagination. Extending across historically aquatic sites throughout Rome, the installation connects locations once defined by flow, now dry. These sounds gather where water no longer moves, resonating toward sites such as the Baths of Caracalla and the Baths of Diocletian. Listening becomes a way of sensing what remains and what has disappeared, as the body re-enters these ancient systems not through water, but through sound. 

Akima Brackeen is an architectural designer, researcher and educator, and is the Director of Exhibit A, a design practice focused on investigating the social, political, and ecological dimensions of water access to reveal the systems of power and care. Through design, art, and research, she examines the material traces that shape perceptions and values within the built environment. Akima was awarded the 2025-26 Lily Auchincloss Rome Prize in Architecture by the American Academy in Rome and was selected as a University Design Research Fellow for the 2024-25 cycle of Exhibit Columbus, a 2025 Global Goals Award by the United Nations Association- Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennial U.S. Pavilion, Princeton University School of Architecture Gallery, Van Alen Institute, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.