Presentation of a Key to the City and To the Future Mayor by Nancy Nowacek

Presentation of A Key from the City

NYC harbor waters, ice cast into a ceremonial key, presented to the public, melts to form a new NYC body of water

To the Future Mayor

Months of emails, phone calls, and tweets to mayoral candidates on the 2021 ballot remain unanswered; and multiple strategies to invite candidates to pay attention to the waterways, waterfront, and the plan for caring, fortifying, and tending our city’s edges are continuously ignored. Does this disinterest portend a new mayoral administration?

Causeway: Reimagining the Edge by Dylan Gauthier

A crowdsourced augmented reality and public drawing project, Causeway: Reimaging the Edge interprets data from the NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan's public access implementation study, renderings of future and current building sites along the NYC waterfront, and historic hydrologic maps to invite the public to reimagine water access and care in their neighborhoods. Using a custom Instagram filter developed by the artist, the public will be invited to create photo renderings of future access points along the water. The project asks: how can various proposed solutions to rising sea level rise promote better access and environmental justice in the city? How can we reimagine our city’s edges to allow for additional access to water? What do we want our waterfront to look like in the future?

The Urban Environment and The Sacred: Water Ritual, and Water Is Our Bodies, Our Bodies Are Water by Elizabeth Velazquez

What if humanity lived in constant awareness of sacredness? How would we treat our bodies, each other, the land and water? My current work contemplates the sacred among the urban environment in two works, The Urban Environment and The Sacred: Water Ritual, and Water Is Our Bodies, Our Bodies Are Water.

Long Distance Dedication (Now on with the countdown) by Nancy Nowacek

Long Distance Dedication (Now on with the countdown) is a sound work composed of appropriated lyrics of pop songs from the 1970s as a Greek chorus for the environment. Voices express the emotional urgency of rising sea levels and increasingly intense weather—for humans and non-humans alike. Visitors are invited to stream the work (available from QR codes on signs situated around the island) while sitting on the island’s edges, looking out towards the ocean, and will hear phrases from songs come and go, like flickering radio station signals in far-flung places. The gaps between them become filled by the ambient sounds of the place itself. Singing to all those who can hear it, this soundtrack serves as a collective voice underscoring the bewildering and rapid changes in the world.

(Re)imagining Greenpoint’s Green Waters by Ray Jordan

As a way to understand and to (re)imagine the complicated and polluted history of Newtown Creek, artist and Greenpoint resident, Ray Jordan Achan created a short documentary film based on his own investigations, photographs, interviews and archival material as part of Tending the Edge. Ray’s methodology uses archival material as a way to (re)create New York City’s past, understand it’s mistakes - such as governmental and environmental neglect, to learn how to remedy these missteps and to (re imagine sustainable climate solutions for the future. To open the conversation, (Re)imagining Greenpoint’s Green Waters was accompanied by a panel discussion on climate equity and how to prioritize low-income, Black and brown folxs who continue to get displaced when new public amenities such as waterfront parks are created.

Between a Sea and a Shore by Ella Mahoney

Between a Sea and a Shore is a storytelling project which took place in the spring of 2021 as part of Tending the Edge on the shores of the Rockaways. Ella Mahoney explored human relationships with the ocean through peoples' stories with water by asking them the questions “what is your story with water?” and “how do you care for the water, or how does it help you care for yourself?”. The exploration ended with this painting representing stories of joy, awe, and humbling, being carried into the ocean in celebration and play.

Sinking Shore by Clarinda Mac Low

Sinking Shore by Clarinda Mac Low

Sinking Shore is a series of works on paper using photo transfer, watercolor, and digital and physical collage. Sinking Shore is an outgrowth of Sunk Shore, a collaboration between Mac Low and dancer/marine ecologist Carolyn Hall, where Hall and Mac Low lead participants on a site-based tour that time travels from the far past to the present to the climate changed future of specific shorelines, offering an embodied experience of climate change data. Sinking Shore offers another portal into this embodiment, as documentation from tours of the shoreline of Governors Island explodes into the past and future landscapes that are evoked by the tour narrative. Hall and Mac Low will also lead a live series of speculative conversations in response to the works.

Liminal Bodies | Part I by Electric Djinn

Liminal Bodies | Part I is a multimedia performance examining our relationship to bodies of water and how we interact and access them on a daily basis, combining video projection, live dance, and live music. Produced and Directed by Electric Djinn. Music and Sound by Electric Djinn, Co-produced with Mallika Chandaria, Video production by Mallika Chandaria, Choreography and Dance by Nicolas Fiery & Sofía Forero, Additional Dancers: Maya Balam Meyong, Noa Chaney, Reché Nelson. Additional video footage by Alex Seel and under water footage by Nicolas Fiery.

Inside Electric Djinn's studio “Water Meditation” a 20-minute looped immersive audio-video room, created by Electric Djinn, running throughout the day.

This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

Readings on Water by KC Trommer

"Readings on Water" features poems from WoWHaus poet-in-residence KC Trommer's debut collection We Call Them Beautiful (Diode Editions, 2019), including ""Meat Cove, Cape Breton" (a collaboration with fellow WoWHaus artist Amy Wetsch), "Jaws (1975)," "Mica," and "After Looking at Bontecou's Untitled (1961)," and several poems created for the Triennial, including “Francesa in 5B” and “Speaking of Defenestration.” Please look for the reading mermaid throughout the house and scan the QR Code in order to hear a single poem. 

To hear the full selection of “Readings on Water,” please go to:
https://soundcloud.com/kc-trommer/sets/readings-on-water

Drawn Ashore, Sprouting Signals, and Oxygenated Response by Amy Wetsch

Drawn Ashore, Sprouting Signals, and Oxygenated Response are mixed-media installations that examine our connection to the Hudson River. These works were created in response to a collaboration with scientists from Columbia University where we submerged ourselves into the Hudson to experience and research the diversity of life that exists within. Through these works, I am further exposing the life below the surface, calling attention to what we, as humans, add to the water, and celebrating the hopefulness for the future of water by highlighting writings from participants of “The Next Generation of Hudson River Educators.”

Water in the Streets by Sarah Cameron Sunde and Nathan Kensinger

Water in the Streets is a video work that invites us to bear witness to the encroaching edges of Far Rockaway during the "sunny day flooding" event in May 2021. Combining the research, performance, and video art practices of Sarah Cameron Sunde and Nathan Kensinger, this project was created for Tending the Edge and asks: What do these monthly flooding events say about our future and what does it mean for New York City?

Performance and video made in collaboration with Rockaway Youth Task Force, with support from Beach64Retreat. Music by Joshua Dumas. Produced by Maya Shah for Tending the Edge, a collaboration with Works on Water, Culture Push, and the Department of City Planning.

Rivers, Dreams, Invisible Cities by Maya Ciarrocchi

Rivers, Dreams, Invisible Cities comprises suspended cyanotype prints on silk illustrating past and present trajectories of New York City waterways whose shorelines are inaccessible to city residents. Also included are renderings of fantastical cities belonging to an imagined future. Each print tells an individual story, and their merging manifests a reimagined city forever altered by climate change.

Topia...All We Need is U by Cody Herrmann

Topia...All We Need is U is a multi-channel video installation with audio highlighting the relationship between the current landscape and programming available on Governors Island, and future made possible by a recent rezoning of parts of the Island. Viewers will receive a printed map of the island that uses text and visual markers to further illustrate the changes that will likely be coming to Governors Island. The work emphasizes the extent to which perceived value and speculative real estate has and will continue to shape the Island’s landscape.

Honor Indigenous Land, Water & Treaties: A Land Acknowledgement Campaign by Dennis Redmoon Darkeem

WoW is exhibiting the indigenous land acknowledgment flag created by Dennis Redmoon Darkeem inside the house above the mantle. The flag was created to acknowledge the many indigenous tribes that once lived and still remains in New York state. This flag was created as part of Tending the Edge to engage mayoral candidates in the 2021 election and exhibited in city parks and waterways.

Long Harbor by John Atkinson

Long Harbor by John Atkinson

Long Harbor is a sonic meditation on the life of the waters of New York Harbor - including their ever-changing relationship with their human cohabitants. From glacial pre-history through European settlement and industrialization to visions of the post-industrial, climate-weirded future, this 22-minute work explores the complex, slowly-evolving dynamics of the Harbor and the City it has created.

WoWHaus WaterFalls

WoWHaus Waterfalls by sTo Len and the WoW team 

A large scale printmaking installation created with debris picked up around Governors Island and water from the Buttermilk Channel. Inspired by a recurring dream of a flooded house, the scroll-like prints and long flowing fabrics fall out of the windows of Works On Water’s residency building. The prints themselves act as a visual language that decodes the familiar shapes of common trash that washes up on our shorelines well as the natural patterns that water creates while referencing the aesthetic signaling of squats and banner dropping.