Cities and Oceans of If
Cities and Oceans If (2000-2010) imagines a world of “if,” where natural resources were valued and protected. The public art interventions were studies of ecological acupressure “trigger” points across various sites internationally, reinforcing habitat restoration, biodiversity, and interdependence. Experimenting with the virtual and physical and combining artistic inquiry, data collection, and mapping, the project centrally asks, “Can art be used to identify degraded biodiversity hotspots around the world in landscapes and urban regions, whose restoration could affect large-scale landscape healing?
The “If” refers to the world we might live in if natural resources were valued and protected. Broadly conceiving the definition of a site, this project explored how a site’s location could be reconceived as a trigger point for the interdependence between physical, imaginative, and virtual aspects of environmental restoration.
International proposals for public art interventions included sites in Bergen Belsen, Germany; Geumgang, Korea; New Delhi, India, and Pescia, Italy. The goal of restoring sites, to connect fragmented natural resources, has its greatest implications for water. The health of local native fish stocks is one way to track linkage between water systems and habitats.
Virtual Cities and Oceans of If experimented with using the Internet to perform residencies, without the international travel that spews jet fuel over the earth's waters and into her atmosphere. “The physiological cost of traveling to multiple work sites had become as far beyond my personal resources as the fuel use is that taxes our earth. I recognized an opportunity to discover new solutions to our global warming crisis. …The virtual world can leverage sustainable restoration and remediation of degraded ecologies. Virtuality is brilliantly exploited by terrorists. It can equally dramatically serve a different agenda.” —August 2006 “Virtual Cities & Oceans of If” press release.
Pervious, Porous, Integrated Date: 2006 Size: 15’ x 12' x 8' Materials: Cross-media installation: live plants, watering can, painted wall mural and photography Description: Installation at the Exit Art gallery, for The Drop exhibition (2006), a large, labor intensive wall mural about redesigning Manhattan with endemic plants to prepare for flooding caused by sea level rise and climate change. The relationships between Arctic melting, rising water and built infrastructure due to global warming was painted in a short time to reflect how quickly global warming can undo eons of evolution. In the center, a gold circle proposed a redesign of the Manhattan building that was the site of the exhibition.
Transformation and Degradation Date: 2002 Size: 45' x 20' Materials: Installation including mural, sound, graphics and iron bed with fish nets. Description: For the Ecovention exhibition (2002) at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati (CAC). It culminated 12 years research on fisheries and landscape degradation from the Gulf of Maine to the Mississippi River, as part of the Ghost Nets project 1990-2000 and Cities and Oceans of If. Wall mural map in installation envisioned how fresh waterways and fisheries concerns connect the Midwest to the North Atlantic ocean.
'If' Detail Date: 2002 Size: 120" x 456" Materials: Installation mural with GIS graphics. Description: installation detail at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, Maine, GIS graphics created with Dr. Irwin Novak then mounted onto a box construction. The GIS indicated how open urban space might be connected for ecosystem contiguity in coastal fish habitat.
'Listen' Detail Date: 2002 Size: Variable Materials: Photograph Description: detail image from series of graphic installations (Stay Wait Look Listen) designed for Arts in Transit St. Louis, with a landscape restoration proposed for the USML South Station in St. Louis Missouri.
Provenance:
Stills from Cities & Oceans of If have been shown in the following exhibitions: Ecovention, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH, 2000; Imaging the River, curated by Amy Lipton, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, 2003-2004; Visions about Nature, curated by Anke Mellin, Korean Nature Artists Association-Yatoo, Chungnam, South Korea, 2005; Called to Action, curated by Lillian Ball, Art Sites, Riverhead, NY; The Drop curated by Jodi Hanel, Exit Art, New York City, NY, April 8 - June 10, 2006 and Groundworks, curated by Grant Kestor, Regina Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, PA, 2005.
Publications:
Spaid, Sue. Ecovention: current art to transform ecologies. Cincinnati, Ohio: Contemporary Art Center, greenmuseum.org and ecoartspace, 2000.
Auses, Jack; Kester, Grant and Strayer, Jenny Eds. Groundworks Pennsylvania: Carnegie Mellon University, 2005.
Mellin, Anke, Visions About Nature. South Korea: The Korean Nature Artists Association-Yatoo, 2005.
Genocchio, Benjamin. “Digging In to Nurture Nature.” New York Times May 20, 2007.
Rahmani, Aviva. “Mapping Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism.” PJIM, Vol.4, Issue 2, Winter pp.1-9, 2012.
Rahmani, Aviva. “A Community of Resistance: Collaborative Work with Science and Scientists.” WEAD Magazine. Online publication Issue 7, CREATING COMMUNITY, available at: http://weadartists.org/communities-art-science, 2014.