Channel: Key from the City

Nancy Nowacek

Channel: Key from the City is an offering of water made to each NYC Mayoral candidate. It is a gesture that embodies the power citizens give—and trust they place—in their elected officials. It reminds candidates of two realities: the first is that power is fluid and dynamic. The second is the central and critical role that the waterways play in every facet of the city’s life and future. Each candidate’s willingness to accept the offering and pledge to heed New Yorkers’  voices represented in the next Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, and thereby tend the city’s edges will demonstrate their understanding of New York City as a city of water.

Sunk Shore

Carolyn Hall and Clarinda Mac Low

The Sunk Shore tour guides (Carolyn Hall and Clarinda Mac Low), in collaboration with the Tending the Edge artists, will explore the City’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan and interpret the city-wide Tending the Edge projects by engaging visiting audiences in time travel conversations and imaginings towards a climate-changed future. How do our efforts today play out in 2050? What edge will be left to tend?

Water in the Streets

Sarah Cameron Sunde

in collaboration with Nathan Kensinger and Rockaway Youth Task Force with support from Beach64Retreat

At high tide during the full moon in May, as Jamaica Bay spills into the streets in Far Rockaway, Sunde and local collaborators will stand in the streets with the rising water. Constituents and Mayoral Candidates are invited to join in and bear witness to the encroaching edge. The performance will be filmed and shown for all New Yorkers’ to see this monthly flooding. 

This work is an extension and research-based part of Sunde's large-scale series of site-specific performances and video artworks, 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, 2013 - present, which will culminate at the Cove at Socrates Sculpture Park in 2022.

Between the Sea and the Shore: Storytelling in Far Rockaway

Ella Mahoney

Knowing that the stories we tell about the relationships we have with the earth affect how we interact with it, “Between a Sea and a Shore” explores our relationships with the shore through people’s stories with water 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?” Ella Mahoney will be recording stories primarily from people of color accessing the shore and water of the Rockaways. From late April to June, she will interview and record surfers and beachgoers voices and create a large-scale silk painting in response to the conversations. In June the painting will be carried into the water as a performance and public presentation.

Sensory Diagnostics Manual : Wellness at the Edge

Zoey Hart

Waterfront Access Mapping envisions waterfront access as a wellness journey. How do we, as interabled bodies, make our ways to the water’s edge? Towards expanding the conversation around ‘waterfront access points’, waterfront access mapping will chart the visual and narrative paths of diversely-abled bodies as we navigate journeys to waterfront access points across NYC. To illuminate the interdependent complexities of access-centric navigation, the collaborative maps and performative processes of these waterward journeys will be incorporated within the Sensory Diagnostics Manual : Wellness at the Edge - a participatory guide to be made available in print or as a downloadable pdf, inviting public participants to witness wellness and water as interconnected ecologies.

Symbiotic Estuarial Annotation (SEA): Harbor(ing) Multispecies Wisdom Along the Water’s Edge

andrea haenggi

Estuarial Assembly: Council of the Weeds is a somatic research investigation exploring the East River’s edge, inviting local spontaneous urban terrestrial and aquatic plant experts to respond to the Waterfront Comprehensive Plan (WCP). Through dance and sound, agent andrea haenggi will engage with plant experts and the vital “sea body” to hear their voices, as well as a series of talks with community members to speak about resilience and healing in relation to the multispecies coastal commons we collectively share. The project will culminate in an invitation to Mayoral Candidates to join us for a walk along the shoreline to imagine what multispecies commoning could be for a coastal city. The voices and experiences shared will be integrated into a Public Healing Report in the form of annotations to the WCP document and propelled into a public performance entitled, Thank You Estuarial.

andrea haenggi with

• (collaborator) Estuarial Assembly: Council of the Weeds are urban spontaneous terrestrial and aquatic vegetation living, breathing, and thriving on the shoreline of the East River. They are known for their resiliency and can handle the hotter summers, heavier storm runoff, and increased carbon dioxide that have come with global warming. They tend to each other, evolve with humans, and bring their wisdom as speculative future flora to the question of survival in a warmer world.

• (collaborator) Christopher Kennedy (he/him) is an EPA agent and advisor for this effort. He is the assistant director at the Urban Systems Lab (The New School) and lecturer in the Parsons School of Design. Kennedy’s research focuses on understanding the socio-ecological benefits of spontaneous urban plant communities in NYC, and the role of civic engagement in developing new approaches to environmental stewardship and nature-based resilience.

Brownfield Boating: Paddling tours of Flushing Creek

Cody Ann Herman

with Mayoral, Queens Borough President, and City Council District 20 & 21 candidates in collaboration with Guardians of Flushing Bay

Brownfield Boating invites New York City (NYC) mayoral candidates, Queens Borough President candidates, and NYC Council District 20 and 21 candidates on paddling tours of Flushing Creek in collaboration with Tending the Edge and Guardians of Flushing Bay. Tours will explore the disconnect between current plans for the waterfront and the next NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan produced by the NYC Department of City Planning. Candidates will have a chance to kayak or canoe in Flushing Creek, check in on nearby oyster cages, explore combined sewage overflows up close, and discuss details about the numerous plans for development along Flushing Creek and Flushing Bay.

(Re)imagining Greenpoint’s Green Waters

Ray Jordan Achan

As a way to understand and to (re)imagine the complicated and polluted history of Newtown Creek, artist and Greenpoint resident, Ray Jordan Achan will create a short documentary film based on his own investigations, photographs, interviews and archival material. Ray 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 will be 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.

Pulp Mobile: Papermaking on the Edge of the East River

Rejin Leys

PulpMobile is a mobile papermaking studio by artist Rejin Leys that uses public space and paper recycling to prompt interaction and discussion between neighbors. For Tending the Edge, Rejin will bring her PulpMobile to the East River, and invite people to make paper with her. In order to prompt awareness and discussion about the waterfront, a selection of poems/texts/images that highlight recreation, shipping, transportation, or climate issues will be provided, and people can choose from containers of shredded copies of those materials to use as inclusions in their paper. Masks and spacing are required, and hand sanitizer will be provided for use before and after participation.

Yucca: Learning from Wetlands

Simone Johnson

Yucca is a summer research project that sits in the in-between; it is led by seeing what happens, Simone’s water futures practice and what author Bayo Akomolafe calls “an activism of inquiry”. Follow Simone’s journey as she documents her experiences visiting Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens, NYC, as well as her speculations on the desires and imaginations of wetlands, especially as it relates to land development in NYC. This project aims to respond to and be in dialogue with a set of curated multimedia content and conversations, and the New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. Yucca also includes Simone’s pilot Blue Planet Free School, which will host a series of weekly workshops focused on learning about wetlands into early July.

Learn more about Yucca on Simone's Are.na page.

Attunement: Listening to the New York Waterfront

mayfield brooks

This project is born out of artist Mayfield Brooks' investigation into the sonic lives of whales and how they perceive the world through sound. Additionally, brooks has been exploring the correlation between the present and historical industrialized bodies of whales and Black people from whaling to slavery. A little known fact is that some slave ships were later used as whaling vessels. Through this research comes a sonic residence with grief and a commitment to listen more closely. If we were to take hints from how whales understand their world sonically, could we learn how to listen better? Perhaps the blues is a prescient corollary? What music draws us to the edge? This project encourages listening as a way of perceiving in order to understand the vibrant, intricate life along the NYC shoreline. The public will be invited to listen to the shoreline, and sounds will be experienced through live stream, guided silent walks, and other engaged activities.

Sacred Waters: Jamaica Bay

Elizabeth Velazquez

in collaboration with Angela Miskis + Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus and United Madrassi Association Inc.

Artist Elizabeth Velazquez reconnects with ancestral knowledge, and extracting, excavating, and reclaiming that history from her body through the act of ritual. Water Ritual: Tending the Edge at Jamaica Bay is a collaborative piece where a water ritual is merged with a cleaning ritual. Through performance, Velazquez and Angela Miskis come together to activate the water’s edge and reflect on the need for a cleaner and safer waterfront that is both revered and respected. Angela's performance expands on her current work, Abuela Neighborhood Maintenance (ANM), which combines her family history, commitment to social service, and sustainability in stewardship projects across Queens. The project Sacred Waters: Jamaica Bay gains inspiration from the NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan (CWP) and is made in collaboration with Sadhana: Coalition of Progressive Hindus and United Madrassi Association Inc., existing cultural organizations dedicated to protecting Jamaica Bay. One goal stated in the CWP, is to promote the "stewardship of public spaces on the waterfront.” Stewardship is one concept that guides the work Sacred Waters: Jamaica Bay, as well as connecting and interacting with the natural environment.

Crip’d Fleets Overflows + Disruptions

Moira Williams

Access to NYC’s public waterways and accessibility for disabled people to public waterways rarely mean the same thing. Disability Justice believes in looking beyond ADA accessibility and architectural accommodation. Mia Mingus, a Disability Justice scholar and activist coined the phrase “access intimacy” that describes accessibility beyond ADA as an attitude; “that hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs.”

Crip’d Fleets: Overflows + Disruptions supports this understanding of accessibility as an attitude and aims to collectively turn several NYC waterfront access points into Accessible Water Intimacy Points. Between May and June, Artist moira williams will navigate with disabled people across disability towards waterfront access points throughout NYC to be with water and co-create virtual and physical performances, Access Care Flags, Accessible Water Intimacy Points and a Disability Dance Party on a boat.

Honor Indigenous Land, Water & Treaties: A Land Acknowledgement Campaign

Dennis Redmoon Darkeem

Honor Indigenous Land, Water & Treaties is a water acknowledgment campaign that centers the traditional customs of the Algonquin people and the history of New York City’s waterways. Artist Dennis RedMoon Darkeem will present a land & water acknowledgment flag on NYCs waterways as a way of advocating for the rights of indigenous tribes, their traditional water practices, and honoring water protectors of the past and present

Causeway: Envisioning Expanded Water Access at and Beyond the Edge

Dylan Gauthier

A crowdsourced augmented reality work, Causeway interprets data from the City’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan’s public access implementation study and historic hydrologic maps to invite the public to reimagine water access in their neighborhoods.