No Plan Is an Island is a multi-location sound piece designed to be listened to in one of 3 sites across NYC with which the artist/creators have an ongoing practice:
Playing with non-human perspectives on over-developed land, rising tidewaters, and traditional multi-species agroecology, the piece challenges green gentrification schemes and offers alternate perspectives for a species on the brink of extinction.
This project is made in support of the NYC Community Activation of Public Space (CAPS) Collective, helmed by the Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice who are currently working to expand community access to the agri/cultural commons and mutual aid foodways in the fight for a more socially and ecologically just future.
Practice 94. (Loving Coincidences), is a project that at its core research, reveal, celebrate and put into practice la Milpa, an agro-ecological polyculture Mexican technology. Milpa means in Nahuatl, "sown", a place of encounter or “loving coincidences”. The main protagonists of this project are corn, beans and squash along with its Rhizosphere (plant roots-soil interface). The central question of this project is: how this ancestral technique (a polyculture) and the interactions among corn, beans & squash transform the rhizosphere and can potentially remediate the soil?
To listen to this piece walk to the back of Swale Food Forest at the Urban Farm in Governors Island.
What does Water think about our climate mitigation strategies? This sound piece considers that question while taking in the failing combined sewage overflow (CSO) outfalls of Stuy Cove Park, and the work of the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project (ESCR).
A multi-year endeavor sparked by the devastating impacts of 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, the ESCR is a new construction project which will create a series of flood walls and berms around lower Manhattan’s coastline. This “Big U” will require the demolition and reconstruction of the current coastal landscape in an attempt to stave off rising tides and violent storms-- two deadly results of humanity’s past decisions.
The project will cost $2+ billion, necessitate the destruction of a 60+ acre carbon sink, and will only partially repair the city’s outdated and overburdened sewage infrastructure, which was a major player in the deadly floods of 2021’s Hurricane Ida.
This piece should be listened to from the gangplank of the Stuy Cove ferry, looking back towards land. It is best experienced during high tide each day.
Today Flushing Bay and Flushing Creek, located on the north shore of Queens, NYC, are at a turning point. Virtually every inch of coastline along the Flushing Waterways is incorporated into large scale development projects. Before cement is poured a small window of time exists to promote equitable development and participatory planning processes along Flushing Bay and Creek.
Planning proposals and re-zonings along the Flushing Waterways including but not limited to the Special Flushing Waterfront District (2019), LaGuardia AirTrain (2021), Special Willets Point District (2008), FMCP Strategic Framework Plan (2008), and Flushing Bay and Creek Long Term Control Plans (2016/2014), some of which were first drafted before Hurricane Sandy, often overlook the imminent threats of the climate crisis, and encourage increased density while lacking resilient design features suggested for ecologically vulnerable areas. The surrounding neighborhoods of Flushing, East Elmhurst, Willets Point, Corona, Jackson Heights, and College Point deserve better.
Listen to this piece while walking over the north side of the Roosevelt Avenue Bridge looking over Flushing Creek, or while walking along the beach under the southwest side of the Northern Boulevard Bridge.
CREDITS
This piece was created during the 2021 Human Impact Institute fellowship for the Creative Climate Awards and is a collaboration between Cody Ann Herrmann, Katherine Patiño Miranda, and Candace Thompson.
Additional sound: Jakob Thiesen, Urupin, Dredding, and CCCanary. Additional voices are interviews clips with Cristóbal González Meza Gómez Farías,Hyaznä Ugalde and Dario.
Sound mixed by Kim Buikema.
Special thanks to Amanda McDonald Crowley, Margaret Boozer, Lisa Bloodgood and Dina Elkan.