Fish House, from conveyance, smudge studio 002016
CONVEYANCE + See it Rise
conveyance: a means of transferring or escorting people or things from one place to another, accompanying them along the way.
Realizing the reality of rising waters necessitates migrations of many sorts, including migrations of ideas, emotions, sense of place, self and other. We sense that psychological and philosophical migrations are as vital to graceful migration as much as infrastructural, scientific and prepatory/adaptive actions.
Graceful migration — how to live with the realities of massive change without being overtaken by paralyzing fear, depression, guilt.
During the Rising Waters II Confab residency at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Captiva Island, Florida, we practiced living the reality of the rising waters surrounding the property. The buildings sit at an average of 3.1 feet above sea level. The waters here rise approximately .003 inches each day.
We creatively responded to the reality of rising seas through the medium of the cyanotype — a medium that involves us in the material change that makes the world. We waited for the light. We noted the humidity, time of day. We collaborated with the sun to convey form and elements to paper via a shoebox aperture. We waited. We immersed paper in cold water.
Structures came into being, signaling from the future from within a groundless sea of blue.
The subtle creative spirits and histories that presently dwell in these buildings are embarking on a great migration, propelled by planetary phase shifts. We offer this series of fifteen cyanotypes as a means of conveyance, escort, accompaniment.
- smudge studio, May 002016
A broadside was generated for the project, illustrating the sea-level rise occurring on Captiva (approx. .03 inches every 10 days).
Cyanotype images include the following Rauschenberg Foundation buildings and sites: Curators House, Main Gate, Waldo Cottage, napkins on back porch of Weeks House, Fish House, pier to Fish House, Weeks House, .03 line (sea level rise each 10 days on Captiva), Shed, Bay House, Dance Studio, Print House, Bay House, Main Studio and Garage Studio.
project installation at Rising Waters II Open Studio, Captiva Island, FL May 24, 002016
To read more about the project and process see the related FOP post: Conveyance May 002016
Project was created during the Rising Waters II Confab residency, May 2016, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Captiva, Florida.
+ silkscreen images of 10 bulidings were "conveyed" via postcard dispatch to 44 backers of the Living Deep Time Year 00001 project in June 002016
The Conveyance project was included in the exhibition Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape and the Postnatural
Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
The project was also included in, "Ambiguous Territory: Aesthetic Practices Against Agrilogistics" by Kathy Velikov, David Salomon, Cathryn Dwyre, and Chris Perry" , in FOOTPRINT: DELFT ARCHITECTURE THEORY JOURNAL THE ARCHITECTURE OF LOGISTICS, AUTUMN / WINTER 2018 Volume 12 | Number 23 (page 147). Hard copies availble from www.japsambooks.nl
"In this context the artists and designers in Ambiguous Territory are positioned neither as problem solvers nor as priests; they are not the keepers of sacred knowledge. Rather, they are fictional truth-tellers who present alternative visions of the present as well as the future. They are not just witnesses to an unfolding and inevitable tragedy but are actors in it, often taking on an extreme form of action; an aesthetic and an ethic that is at once truth and fiction, ambiguous yet tangible, excessive and, ultimately, necessary as a response to the extremity of our age."