Hello,
Sharing news and a call…
Unfortunately the installation series will not start this weekend due to
the intense rain and a Covid risk 💧:'(
The actual first installation will be a makeup date this Wednesday Oct 4,
from 12-5ish at Newtown Creek Nature Walk Park.
Another makeup date will be announced when the forecast is KNOWN !
All the other dates, including Oct 7th at the Kingsland wildflowers garden
Greenroof with performances (eventbrite forthcoming) are still on as of now.
My Instagram linked at the bottom of this email will have more in depth
updates each day!
!!!!Finally i would like to invite you to help me collect oral histories
about and sonic events from all the rain we just received. Please reach out
if you are open to being casually interviewed in person or over the phone
about the intense flooding and wetness we have experienced here in New
York. Did you experience flooding ? Feelings? Travel restriction? Memories?
Feel free to send a recording as well. This audio could be used in this
project and other nyc precipitation based sound art projects.
Thank you all for reading <3
*Here’s the original email again… * *Hello friends and listeners* *Hello
friends and listeners*
I am writing to share information and the current* schedule for a series of
installations and events I will share throughout October in North Brooklyn
called *Mespaetches Creek Dynamic Listening*, an activation of sound
sculpture, soft sculpture, and public space for critical play, affective
information, and collaboration.
[image: MCDL Schedule.jpg]
This project invites you to…
-Kinesthetically explore and recompose fragments of a vast sonic archive of
interviews, oral histories, field recordings, events, and drones recorded
from 2018-2023 that hold insight into the ecological systems, histories of
environmental and social devastation and remediation, and playful sonic
quality of “Newtown Creek” and NYC climate activism.
-Handle these sounds in the Dynamic Listening Instrument, a sculpture/tool
that allows sounds to be heard and blended across a venn-diagram of
electromagnetic fields using buckets and pillows/stuffed animals outfitted
with speakers and coils.
-View, touch, and lounge on Pre-York River Blankets, large embroidered
quilts made from up-cycled materials sewn for different communities,
places, and ecologies along the “Hudson” River watershed.
-Visit unique parks and a remediating waterfront concealed by industrial
clamor for deep hanging out and creek education.
-Be present for performances from artists like Pudding Club, Kwami
Winfield, and other friends making work and living lives engaged with the
waterway that will be happening across the installation schedule.
I <3 Acoustemology (knowing through sound)
I would love to share and experience this project with you and hope you can
make it to one of the currently scheduled activations. Please share this
email with people you think would be interested. Definitely feel free to
reply with rsvp or questions! You can text or call me for specific
directions about how to reach some of these desolate industrially hidden
parks! 516-491-9983 +
Please join us October 7th, (the day after my birthday ;)) at The Kingsland
Wildflowers Green Roof from 4-8 for an installation and performances at Newtown
Creek Alliance’s HQ where we can
overlook the creek and the giant Wastewater Treatment Plant. There will be
refreshments, and a native plant sale earlier in the afternoon.
(Stay tuned for an eventbrite link)
[image: Oct 7 Schedule.JPG]
[image: Oct 7.jpg]
This series of installations is made possible, in part, by the New York
State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor
and the New York State Legislature through the Media Arts Assistance Fund a
regrant partnership of NYSCA and Wave Farm. I am very grateful to Wave Farm
for believing in and supporting this project!
The Creek is one of the most historically polluted in the world. Large
refineries for oil, raw materials, and chemicals have transformed the creek
since the 1850s saturating the area with spills, waste, and countless large
fires. Since the 1970s the creek has seen less industrial traffic and more
environmental activists working to remediate the waterway and clean up
amassed haunting and illusive oil, toxicity, and industrial waste. Newtown
Creek is a federal superfund site.
You can learn all about the history of the creek, from its glacial
formation, pre-colonial inhabitants and industrial happenings through
amazing interactive maps on Newtown Creek Alliance’s website…
http://www.newtowncreekalliance.org/exploring-newtown-creek/
My intentional engagement with the creek through art began in 2020 when I
began building a sonic archive and making soft maps documenting the fight
against and impact of the North Brooklyn Pipeline. This pipeline was
secretly built from Newtown Creek to Flatbush during the pandemic and has
been so far successfully made useless by activist collectives including No
NBK Pipeline Coalition, FrackoutBK, and Sane Energy Project. National Grid,
who secretly built the pipeline and is having Brooklyn residents pay for it
via gas bills, had its first operation on the creek almost 100 years ago in
1925. As National Grid continues to try and fight for its illegal pipeline
and expanding monopolized fossil fuel infrastructure on the creek, activist
groups have declared that National Grid itself must be dissolved and shut
down for a transition to clean energy and a democratized decarbonized
energy economy.
My matrilineal family grew up adjacent to the creek in Long Island City
after immigrating to the U.S. in the early 20th century. Included in this
sonic archive is an interview with my cousin Alexis who grew up in Long
Island City. We visit the house she lived in until the late 60s and PS1
(now moma) where my grandfather Palatella ended school as a kid. This
series is part of a larger body of work and place making project I've been
building since 2018 called Pre-York River which builds interactive archives
for and about communities, ecologies, and histories along the "Hudson"
River watershed. Pre-York River Video Note #1
Haverstraw
Newtown Creek Alliance is doing so many amazing things with this waterway.
Attending the events they initiate and collaborate on has informed me and
this project greatly. Wetland and waterway remediation is so exciting,
important, and fun.
[image: Dynamic Listening.JPG]
Current activation schedule is…
Sept 30 Noon-6pm – Newtown Creek Nature Walk Park
Octo 1 Noon-6pm – Newtown Creek Nature Walk Park
October 7 4pm-8pm Kingsland Wildflowers Greenroof *talks and performances
Oct 14 10am-3:30pm – McGorlick Park
Oct 15 Noon-Sunset – Plank Road Public Shoreline *dance performances
Oct 21 Noon-Sunset – Penny Bridge Park
Oct 22 Noon-Sunset – Under the “K” Bridge Park *sound performance
Oct 28 Noon-Sunset – -WNYC Transmitter Park *performances
Oct 29 9am-??? -Newtown Creek Nature Walk Park
Use google maps for navigation and
Check @cal._.fish on instagram for
updates rain dates, and future installation dates! Thank you so much for
reading! And thank you to all who have supported this project including
Xander, Chloe, Wave Farm, Newtown Creek Alliance, Kim, everyone who has
been interviewed and recorded for this project and many more <3 -Cal
(they/them) http://calfish.land/