Waterpod™ is a floating, sculptural, eco-habitat designed for the rising tides. It will depart on May 1, 2009, from the Newtown Creek between Brooklyn and Queens, navigate down the East River, explore the waters of New York Harbor, docking at several Manhattan piers on the Hudson River before continuing onward.The Waterpod demonstrates future pathways for water-based innovations. As a sustainable, navigable living space, the Waterpod showcases the critical importance of the environment and art, serving as a model for new living, d.i.y. technologies, art, and dialogue. It illustrates positive interactions between communities: private and corporate; artistic and social; aquatic and terrestrial while exploring the cultural richness of New York's five boroughs and beyond. The Waterpod embodies self-sufficiency and resourcefulness, learning and curiosity, human expression and creative exploration. With this project, we hope to encourage growth and progress as we visualize the future, or through its dilatory, watery peregrinations, the Waterpod intends to prepare, inform, inspire, provoke, and fortify humanity for tomorrow's exterior explorations.
NEWS
January 2009: New Year The Waterpod™ team is busy preparing for the hard and exciting work ahead. We are happy to be adding a new section to the website for our official COLLABORATORS. So far, Veronica Flores, a visual artist and builder from Guadalajara and Mara Haseltine, a Brooklyn-based artist with a love for the natural sciences, have both joined the project. Haseltine is responsible for the creation of a Contemporary Oyster Midden and a Mineral Pool onboard the Waterpod™ >>
New inital sketches for the 3D renderings of Waterpod™>> Thanks to James Halverson of Vancouver based Lux Visual Effects Inc.
DECEMBER 2008: SALVAGE OPERATION. With help from the Mayor's office, Coast Guard, Parks Department, Dockmaster Unit, and the Blank Rome Law Firm, a firm specializing in Maritime Law, Waterpod™ project is moving along at full speed. The Parks Department has donated growing material, a shipping container, and other building materials and tools to the project. -Film by Cory Mervis.
Derek Hunter, Mary Mattingly, and Cory Mervis have been working at a space out in Floyd Bennett Field, documenting the work of the Parks Department's Task Force as they retrieve sunken vessels from the waterways. In the Rockaway area alone, there are well over 300 boats that have been left to sink by their owners or by the marinas that are no longer getting storage payment from their owners. Aside from the litter of the boats themselves, in a short amount of time the chemicals from these boats will begin leaching into the water, and they become dangerous obstacles for other boats traversing this area. Many of these boats have to be retrieved and demolished. They have begun salvaging parts from the vessels to re-purpose for Waterpod™.
-Photographs by Mary Mattingly.
NOVEMBER 2008: WE HAVE A BARGE.
We have a barge and therefore the foundation to start building. Derek Hunter, one of the primary artists and collaborators is currently on his way from Vancouver to New York to begin the construction. Eve K. Tremblay is working from Berlin on the Seed Salon Scenario, Mira Hunter is meeting with the Istanbul MOMA to discuss a possible exhibition before heading out on a tour through Switzerland and the Middle East, while Mary Mattingly is in New York generating more architectural sketches, updated with the new barge proportions>>
-Sketch of Waterpod™ by Mary Mattingly.
NEW YORK POWOW, AUGUST 30 - SEPTEMBER 08, 2008 MFA, Re-structure, Waterpod Archipelagos Water Parade, Jean-Michel Ross, Occurence Center d'Art et d"Essais Contemporain.
-Eve K. Tremblay and Mary Mattingly have been working in New York on Waterpod™ re-structure with newly found materials. This futuristic re-structure will allow a symbiosis between the architecture and nature, the latter reclaiming its own rights.
An MFA program will be implemented (Mattress for Artist) that will be posted online in 2009, requesting artist applications for potential candidates to live, work, and create on Waterpod™ for an intensive program of up to one week, as well as the Couch Surfing for Writers and Curators Program, matching writers with artists.
Waterpod™ is getting ready to launch a print edition for fundraising (we will have editioned prints available in the spring of 2009), planning for Waterpod™ Archipelagos Water Parade, between New York and Montreal, is underway, meeting of minds: co-curator Jean-Michel Ross from Montreal comes to New York, and on the 10th of September we will re-join in Montreal to work with Occurence Centre d’Art et d’Essais Contemporain with Lily Michaud.
PRIX PICTET, JULY 2008 Mary Mattingly's
photography has been shortlisted for the Prix Pictet
(www.prixpictet.com/artists/)
-The
Prix Pictet is a photographic award centering around
water and ecological sustainability. The work of 17
artists worldwide will be exhibited at the Palais de
Tokyo in Paris, and onto London, Dubai, and beyond.
MAY DAY, 2008 We have re-launched
the Waterpod™ website (www.thewaterpod.org)
with contents including:
-Newtown Creek Audio Walk, revised for the future. Download this podcast for a thirty-minute walk along the Newtown Creek.
-Video documentation of the Beta Launch from the Newtown Creek.
-Documentation of Eve K. Tremblay's performance, The Nomadic Consciousness, where Tremblay recites Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451.
-Documentation of Mira Hunter's water performance.
-Video interviews with the artists.
