ENGLISH KILLS @ the McKinney Avenue Contemporary – Dallas, Texas

The ENGLISH KILLS installed at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary was part of the group exhibition AQUA-CULTURE which I curated in January 2014. The installation is composed of videos describing the project, the great egret, micro and macro water life, an enlarged satellite map of the site and a tire gabion with imbedded videos monitors and planted salt-marsh.

The tire gabion is a facsimile of a speculative project to create man-made wetlands in Newtown Creek. Video monitors are placed inside the tires and aligned with the perforations along the treads. The videos display clips of me constructing the gabions, salt-marsh in Brooklyn and Houston, tires and sewage of English Kills and the process of retrieving salt-marsh from wetlands.

Three video monitors flank the enlarged Google map of English Kills. They contain clips of the life that exists in the creek: a killifish, the great egret and microscopic life from water samples.

This artificially, constructed inter-tidal zones are fabricated from stacks of recycled tires (gabions), clean landfill and salt-marsh grass. The gabions are meant to duplicate its former wetlands and act as filters for today’s main cause of contamination created by overflows from sewage pipes.

AQUA-CULTURE
curated by Henry G. Sanchez

Participating Artists: Brenda Perry, Shrimp Boat Projects - Zach Moser & Eric Leshinsky, Irene J. Klaver, Henry G. Sanchez

AQUA-CULTURE showcases artist initiated projects that contribute to the widening discussion of the issues surrounding the uses, management and engagements with water sources, water ways and water bodies. The participants of this exhibition produce interdisciplinary work with social engagement and collaborations that have a philosophical inquiry into exploring an inter-relationship with an aquatic-centric culture. These undertakings integrate their real life experiences, speculations and material evidence into installations, visualizations and documentations that become extensions of the actual projects. AQUA-CULTURE examines the types of impacts that citizens, fishermen, academics, recreationists and artists have on the local hydro ecology, economy and infrastructure and examines the ethos surrounding our inter-relationship with water.

INTO ENGLISH KILLS, examines the variety of life in Newtown Creek’s “heart of darkness”. First shown at the 2013 Greenpoint Film Festival.

ENGLISH KILLS, (2013)

2 channel video (9 min each), & 3 vitrine sculptures, vinyl map

ENGLISH KILLS is an experimentation, investigation and an exploration of the site of English Kills, the southern end of Newtown Creek, which borders northern Brooklyn and Queens. Recently designated a Superfund site, English Kills is also the most contaminated and toxic portion of Newtown Creek. ENGLISH KILLS was part of a group exhibition titled “Current Practice” of participants of the MFA Art Practice Program from the School of Visual Arts. Installed at The Invisible Dog Art Center in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn (July 3 – July 18, 2013), ENGLISH KILLS examines its present status, the history, its manifestations as well as its prospective uses and remediation options. ENGLISH KILLS looks toward a possible future of the presumably dead estuary into a vital, living habitat.

ENGLISH KILLS: TESTIMONIES, (2013)

ENGLISH KILLS: MANIFESTATIONS, (2013)

2 channel video, 9 min. each

TOXIC TALISMAN: TRIDENT , (2013)

8”(h) X 9”(w) X 9”(d)

soil from English Kills, vitrine

TOXIC TALISMAN: ANTI-TRIDENT, (2013)

8”(h) X 6.5”(w) X 6.5”(d)

soil from English Kills, vitrine

TOXIC TALISMAN: N.T.C. , (2013)

9”(h) X 13”(d) X 5”(d) 

soil from English Kills, vitrine

English Kills: TESTIMONIES

Kate Zidar and Mitch Waxman of the Newtown Creek Alliance and Dr Sarah Durand talk about the current role, history and prospects of remediating English Kills. Each are interviewed by the “Egret”.

English Kills: MANIFESTATIONS

English Kills: MANIFESTATIONS features the “HazMat-Egret” and the “Dancing Talismans”.

BUSHWICK LAUNDRY 2

“Bushwick Laundry” address the uses, presence and destination of water in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick. By using the frame of the washing machine windows as the focal point, various perspectives of the neighborhood and its water sources provide a portal into our local community and its history.

BUSHWICK LAUNDRY 1

“Bushwick Laundry” address the uses, presence and destination of water in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick. By using the frame of the washing machine windows as the focal point, various perspectives of the neighborhood and its water sources provide a portal into our local community and its history.

     I live just a few blocks from the furthest end of Newtown Creek (NTC) called English Kills. English Kills is also the most toxic part of the estuary. It is where much of the waste that was dumped in NTC has settled. This past summer I accessed the site to collect soil and water samples as well as to video record the views. I even managed to bring a canoe to its banks to launch an excursion to explore the NTC and English Kills.

    The interdisciplinary project ENGLISH KILLS is an artistic proposition to examine the site of English Kills from various perspectives: from a macro to a microscopic level; from the scientific to phenomenology: from a sculptural object to a time based moving image; from the natural world to the artistic sphere; from the art object to a potential speculative proposition; from the material to the spiritual: from the objective to the personal; from historic to contemporary times.

    I will bring research data, plant life and the soil and water samples of the site of English Kills, video, photographic evidence, terrarium installations and print based media to ENGLISH KILLS. I intend to make several tests by sowing plant life to detect its affects on the toxicity of the soil and whether it reduces its phosphorusness.

    The video and project ENGLISH KILLS, juxtaposes perspectives (both macro and micro) of samples from English Kills with other imagery based on experimental, personal and local history that fuse together notions of redemption with the proposition of environmental remediation. The goal will be to envision English Kills and NTC as a potential place for ecological, as well as personal deliverance and transformation from the past. I intend to create an art installation that becomes a scientific and historical reminder of a once living and now assumedly dead estuary.

Like the Egyptian Pharaohs before them, their names are wiped out and written over with the successor’s.

Installation of “Planes Over Bushwick”

Shown at Ethan Pettit Contemporary Art, “Planes Over Bushwick” is a five channel video installation focusing on the flight traffic that roam over my neighborhood in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The installation hangs from the ceiling of the room to give a sense of disequilibrium and anxiety of planes flying in various patterns towards unknown destinations.

title & date: Pamplona (2012)

duration: 7:16m

“PAMPLONA” is a video of the artist’s father regaling his family about his experience of running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. The record of his Christmas time conversation among the family at the dinner table are layered with videos highlighting the romance and dangerous reality of a centuries old tradition.

GEO-LOCO: The Re-Imagined Landscape presents five artists who practice digital media to explore the traditional theme of landscape. Each artist investigates different perspectives and conceptual approaches to achieve their idiosyncratic vision. The artists’ employ concepts such as the “desired” landscape, the simulacra, nostalgia, the political, historical implications of policy on the environmental, and romantic antecedents that speaks to a contemporary notion of “landscape art”.

Eto Otitigbe dissects the notion of landscape as one that is prescribed by manmade borders. The birth of nationhood coincides with the artist’s sense of fulfillment and renewal. Carla Gannis juxtaposes our personal lives with our mediated digital perception. She examines how electronic devices and computer display can serve as tools to superimpose one-self virtually, artistically, geographically, emotionally and psychologically. Henry G. Sanchez documents Newtown Creek to English Kills at its accessible points to discover a notional sense of local history and mapping. Every visited site reveals a new personal sensory experience and creates another perspective about an overlooked geography. Eve Andrée Laramée excavates the ramifications of nuclear waste policy and its implications towards the uses of our natural resources. In doing so she mines visions of dystopian environments with the romance of deserts as locations of frontiers and as precipice. Phil Buehler’s personal sense of horizon reminds us of our common romantic vision of space exploration. He reveals this nostalgia of a once great American vision as an unfulfilled cultural, political and technological space.

What emerges from GEO-LOCO: The Re-Imagined Landscape are artists that seek to fulfill a deeper relationship and a wider definition of contemporary “landscape art”. Through their ecological, psychological and political points of views and through their aesthetic concepts they demonstrate a path how digital media can bridge the divide from technology to the spiritual.

Henry G. Sanchez

Curator

Katie Hickman

Curatorial Assistant

Title: N.T.W.K.D.K.M.C.E.K.,

Date: 2011

url: http://vimeo.com/34764854

Medium: LCD monitors, mixed media

Size: approx. 120" x 240" x 12” (dimensions variable)

N.T.W.K.D.K.M.C.E.K., maps the length of the Newtown Creek and its tributaries which borders northern Brooklyn and Queens, NY.

LCD monitors mark spots along an aerial Google map of the waterway from the Pulaski Bridge in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to its end at English Kills in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

The videos are perspectives of dream states, historical reminders and visual sensations of a once living and now dead estuary. 

title: SPIN

url: vimeo link: http://vimeo.com/23733583

format: standard definition 720x480 (3.2)

length: 3min, 25sec.

date: 2011

description:

The audio of Spin is a conversation between a father about his artist son’s romantic past. The video of “Spin” is captured from a moving car (traveling across bridges and tunnels) and of rotating objects (mirrored balls and ferris wheels).

 The discussion centers around the father’s searing interpretation and blunt assessment of his son’s failed attempts at marriage and relationships. The juxtaposition of hypnotic and moving pictures with the frank and critical commentary conveys how personal history is often remembered through seemingly unrelated imagery.