FIELDNOTES FROM THE GOWANUS

This blog is a collection of projects, documentation, writing and other ephemera from a visual research workshop led by The Canary Project and commissioned by Commissioned by the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC) in conjunction with the exhibition U-n-f-o-l-d: A Cultural Response to Climate Change.
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• Curtis Hamilton, Gowanus

  

  

  

  Gowanus (2011)
  Curtis Hamilton (b. 1983, US)
  b/w offset on newsprint, 16 pages, unbound 13” x 10.5”, ed. 1000

  Words drown in the Gowanus Canal.  The histories, the myths, the cries foul and the pleas for remediation, all spill downhill, discharged with the rest of the excess.  Oil, cinder dust, scrap metal, shit, urine, and everything paper thin and not tied down settles here at the bottom of the valley, giving the water its scum skin, thick enough to float anything for a moment.  The temptation to point to things is choked back.   There is a tin can half-full of poisonous adjectives bobbing amidst its own pure chemical explanation.  To call it anything would mean opening my mouth and tasting it, tasting the new name it is becoming.