Flotsam

This installation was made during a Swing Space residency from March 15th to July 25th, 2010, with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) in New York City on Governors Island.

View from the studio over New York harbor.

New York Times article June 1st, 2010

NYC Official Guide June 23rd, 2010

Installation and view from the studio over New York harbor.

Flotsam was inspired by the multi-layered history of the Island as it relates to an understanding of both individual and collective nostalgia. The 1:1 scale model in paper of a broken aluminum canoe is juxtaposed with another paper model of a birch tree, (used by Native-Americans to make canoes), based on one that is now growing (in ‘un-broken’ state) on Governors Island.

A brief history of Governors Island

1:1 model of broken Grumman aluminum canoe,      75 x 45 x 500 cm, paper.

The canoe is modeled on a type manufactured by Grumman, a corporation that mainly makes airplanes and warships for the military, recalling the long connection of the Island with the military services and the shift since the arrival of the Dutch settlers in the early 17th century from a relatively harmonious relationship of the inhabitants and users of the island with the natural world to a much more adversarial one.

While the Grumman canoe can refer to the island's military history, perhaps it also triggers recollections of peaceful, bucolic, summertime experiences, serving as a reminder of a harmonious interlude with nature that is now past.

The paper is extremely fragile, and the work therefore almost impossible to transplant; it is bound, as are we, to the moment and the place, and cannot be repeated. There is no way off this particular island…

The globe as harbinger of the early explorers and (exploiters) of the New World or a playful beach ball?

1:1 model of a birch tree found on Governors Island, 300 x 350 x 600 cm, paper.

Both nostalgia for the past and the hope for a better future are really two forms of the same desire: namely the urge to hold onto something that keeps slipping away. (And perhaps on a deeper level, they also mask anger at the thing itself for not allowing itself to be possessed in the first place…) This can take place not only on an individual level, in the form of a longing for lost youth, for instance, but also as a collective, historical force, where visions of a better life can lead to the migration of whole populations, ironically often heralding new forms of environmental destruction.

Detail birch tree, paper

The search for an ideal world goes on and on, though perhaps least destructively in the artists' imagination.

Detail birch tree

The residency is housed in Building 110, a former munitions warehouse on the northern shore of Governors Island, five minutes by boat from Manhattan.