August

Gab Cody/Sam Turich/Philip Sanchez (Visiting Artists)

Daylighting the Stream is an immersive, hypnagogic exploration of the subconscious mind, buoyed by scientific and documentary material. We draw parallels between bodies of water and our bodies made-of-water, and the interplay between the conscious, subconscious and dreaming minds. Participants will believe they are dreaming.

Daylighting the Stream draws inspiration from the subterranean rivers of New York and Pittsburgh. “Daylighting” describes an infrastructure project that re-exposes natural waterways that had been covered for urban development. Following successful daylightings of Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon and the Sawmill River in downtown Yonkers, NY, a daylighting of the Panther Hollow waterway in Pittsburgh is underway.

Our project is a 2-city work, developed and showcased on Governor’s Island in NYC and site-specifically in Pittsburgh. We are in residency on Governor’s Island with the WorksOnWater/UnderwaterNY incubator space for diverse investigations of water in the urban environment.

The immersive encounters are intensely personal, and give participants layers of agency that encourage them to confront their roles in the past, present and future of human interactions with water and waterways. Urban development has buried the constant movement of water under our feet, but these streams from the past still exist, waiting to be rediscovered. Daylighting these streams exposes humanity’s past interactions with water, and provides a map to our future relationship with this most important natural resource.

Sarah Cameron Sunde

Sarah Cameron Sunde is an interdisciplinary artist and director, working at the intersection of performance art, video art, and public practice. She is instigator/co-founder of Works on Water and creator of 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, a seven year series of site-specific participatory performances and video works spanning six continents and seven continents. She stands in bodies of water for a full tidal cycle, invites the public to participate, and films the entire performance in real-time. At the WoWhaus, she'll be preparing for the next 36.5 location in Kenya (November 2019), experimenting with tangential 36.5 works, and doing massive research/location-scouting/mapping towards the final 36.5 in New York City, which take place in September 2020.

More at www.36pt5.org and SarahCameronSunde.com.

Art Jones

I work with film and video, photography, sound, and objects. I often use music, field recordings, text, live action and animation to produce hybrid documents (with narrative suggestions).

‘First Contact’ is an installation and media performance-in-progess. The basis of the piece is the correspondence from the period of 1759 to 1769 between Medford, Massachusetts slave trader Timothy Fitch and the captains who sailed his ships. These letters are a mode for examination of the irrevocable point of contact where bodies meet- the intersection of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, and also the meeting of British settlers and the Africans whose contact, collision, and conflict will eventually produce the ‘Americans’.

During the 2019 WoW/UNY residency I will produce video, sound, photographs, and objects relating to these historical points of contact and the ripples that affect our present moments.

Elizabeth Velazquez

Elizabeth Velazquez is centering her work on the spiritual power of water juxtaposed with a desire to cleanse injustices that linger in bodies of water around Governors Island and NYC. She is imagining a spiritual river, and water, as a membrane between the spirit realm and the living.

Her project involves creating an undulating rope-like sculptural piece, experimenting with seaweed and other material found on the island to make paper, and an original interactive map inviting participants to visit four areas on the island to enact a ritual.

Elizabeth Velazquez creates mixed media sculptural works, installations and rituals. She lives in Queens, NY.

Cody Ann Hermann

Cody Ann Herrmann is an artist and community organizer with an interest in participatory design methods, public space, and urban resilience. Since 2015 Cody's work has revolved around her hometown of Flushing, Queens, creating a series of projects critiquing policy related to land-use and environmental planning in areas surrounding Flushing Creek. While on Governors Island she will be exploring the landscape through the perspective of patch dynamics, and spending time at ‘Buttermilk Beach.’

See more of Cody’s work in Flushing on Instagram at @FlushingBayandCreep.

codyannherrmann.com

Sherese Francis

In residence August 2019

Sherese Francis is a southeast Queens-based poet, literary artist, workshop facilitator, and literary curator of the mobile library project, J. Expressions. She has published work in journals and anthologies including Cosmonauts Avenue, No Dear, Apex Magazine, La Pluma Y La Tinta's New Voices Anthology, The Pierian Literary Review, Bone Bouquet, African Voices, Newtown Literary, Blackberry Magazine, Kalyani Magazine, and Near Kin: A Collection of Words and Arts Inspired by Octavia Butler. Additionally, she has published two chapbooks, Lucy’s Bone Scrolls and Variations on Sett/ling Seed/ling. Currently, she is the co-editor and board member of the small press, Harlequin Creature, and a core member of the Southeast Queens Artist Alliance. To find out more about her work, visit futuristicallyancient.com.