2020-2022 Triennial: A 3-year exhibition

We adapted our 2020 Triennial into a three year exhibition. Despite the pandemic, we produced virtual projects and exhibitions that included Walking the Edge (Instagram Takeovers!), the WoW Video Show, and Tending the Edge, in additional to summer exhibitions at the WoWhaus on Governors Island.

WALKING THE EDGE
A partnership between Works on Water, Culture Push and the New York City Department of City Planning, Walking the Edge was initially envisioned as a participatory non-stop relay walk of all 520 miles of New York City shoreline. Walking the Edge (Covid edition) launched the Works on Water Triennial 20/21. Artists produced weekly prompts (activity suggestions or questions) that invited city residents to explore their water’s edges and engage in imagining changes for those edges—virtually or on solo walks. Responses from the public will help us think boldly and imaginatively about the future of the waterfront and share ideas that will inform the city’s next Comprehensive Waterfront Plan.

THE WOW VIDEO SHOW
In six sessions over the course of three days, the WoW VideoShow presented short videos by over 15 artists from 11 countries working on, in, and with the water. Water and waterways feature both as a place where the work happens and an essential part of the work—friend, deity, home, and collaborator. Working with water, the artists are immersed in the issues at the base of human life—human and non-human relationships to “nature” and culture; economics, history, nation, and infrastructure; race, class, and access; ritual, desire, and the sensory world.

We set out to discover the shared ways artists are thinking about and experiencing water around the world. We discovered a series of models and approaches to water and waterways, that through art, and the intersection with other forms that think through being with and for our waterways. Artists Felipe Castelblanco, Tsubasa Kato, Jane Chang Mi, and Subho O Saha create a direct relationship with the water through their own bodies, performing a singular action in or on the waterway partners. Natalie Casagran Lopez, Basia Irland, Sto Len, and Mary Ellen Strom explore water through performance—music-making, storytelling, and ritual come to the water to reveal new perspectives. Neha Choksi, Jon Cohrs, and Alex Monteith, Natalie Robertson and Graeme Atkins relate directly to water as a permeable material that takes many forms, infiltrating all aspects of our existence. James Dawson, Miguel Arzabe, and Jeannette Ehlers use abstraction to animate water histories, economics, and spatial politics. Marie Lorenz, Geneveieve Robertson and Meredith Lackey explore the infrastructures that contain (or don’t contain) water. The histories that grow up around water inform the works of Jacob Rivkin, Ayesha Hadir, and Lydia Hicks.

TENDING THE EDGE
Making sense of New York City’s Waterfront is not an easy task. How does one find meaning in the 520 miles of coastline that surround the city, and its ever-changing neighborhoods, histories, cultures, and issues? Then, how does one convince mayoral candidates to pay attention to a 10-year plan that maps out conceptual structures, priorities, and policies for this complex space...and commit to act on it.

That was the charge for Tending the Edge artists. They were asked to respond to the New York City Department of City Planning’s (DCP) draft of the 2020-2030 Comprehensive Waterfront Plan (CWP), the city’s roadmap for managing, developing, and caring for its waterfront, with a work that addressed candidates and the public.

Tending the Edge artists approached the breadth of the task through the lenses of their practices and their localities—each focused on a small area of the waterfront that they know well. Their projects form a portrait of the city’s waterfront today, and the intersectional urgencies resulting from histories of systemic oppression, industrialization, privatization, and the emergency of a rapidly changing climate. All 22 Mayoral candidates (one of the largest fields in recent history), as well as some City Council candidates, were invited to participate in Tending the Edge artist projects. Those who accepted experienced a wild variety of approaches to understanding and stewarding the New York City waterfront.

36.5 / A DURATIONAL PERFORMANCE WITH THE SEA
36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea (2013 – 2022) was a series of nine site-specific participatory performance works and video artworks created by Sarah Cameron Sunde that engage people on personal, local, and global scales in conversations around deep time, embodiment, and sea-level rise. The live performance took place in the Cove on Vernon Blvd at 31st Ave, where Astoria meets Long Island City. Sarah stood in the cove for one full tidal cycle, inviting the public to join her by standing in water and/or marking the passing of hours from shore as “the human clock.” Artist collaborators created interventions and installations to amplify the performance. Over 175 people joined Sarah in the water, over 1000 joined as witnesses from the shore at the Cove. Additional viewing stations were set up on the NYC Ferry, Roosevelt Island, and Upper East Side, Manhattan to allow live audiences to gather from various viewpoints.

WATER CONNECTORS
Water Connectors was a series of six neighborhood-based temporary public art projects that connect NYC communities vulnerable to the effects of climate change with their waterfront, and with each other. From the Rockaways to the Bronx, these six socially-engaged artworks embody our ideals of Resiliency, Equity, and Health in relation to our NYC waterways. Water Connectors is specifically built to encourage meaningful conversations and actions with communities that have been traditionally disconnected from the waterfront, despite their proximity, due to barriers in public access. Water Connector artists: Rodrick Bell, Cody Herrmann, Nora Almeida, Ray Jordan Achan, Kin to the Cove Collective, and Buena Onda Collective.

2020-2022 RESIDENCY PROGRAM
Due the Covid crisis of 2020, we adjusted our offerings to be in line with restrictions. We were pleased that we were able to continue our residency program, even in a much reduced capacity. 2020 Residents: Simone Johnson, Cory Tamler, Tess Grundon, Leah Harper, Carolyn Hall, Elizabeth Vazquez, Art Jones, Elecrtic Djinn, Cody Herrmann, Perrin Ireland, Kate Liebman, sTo Len, Clarinda Mac Low, Tyler Rai, KC Trommer, Amy Wetsch, Elizabeth Webb

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