Past Residencies
Sarah Olson and Khadija Kamara
RISE ALL BOATS: A World Water Map, a public participatory performance series charting human migration, personal and ancestral, willful and forced, through food, performative drawing, mapping and oral histories
SWALE house Governors Island Oct.29 and 30
RISE ALL BOATS: A World Water Map was originally launched on Governors Island and in South Carolina along the Gullah Geechee Corridor right before Covid hit in 2019. Sarah and Khadija invite you to“chart your journey” and “tell your story” of migration on a large hand painted world map this weekend. Khadija will present a dish that represents what West African food tasted like pre-colonization and discuss what foods migrated with enslaved Africans into the Americas and how these foods are an integral part of American cuisine today.
http://christopherlinstudio.com
Christopher Lin’s project at Swale Lab utilizes aeroponics techniques as a way to visualize science fiction utopias such as space colonization. Christopher is planning on experimenting with root vegetables that are grown in an aeroponic environment raised from the ground to display the root structures of the grown plants. Some key themes Christopher will be working through include displacement and alienation due to migration, aesthetics of scientific research and science fiction, and utopian visions vs dystopian realities.
Immanuel Oni’s Residency:
“For me, art is not about what I'm making, but who I'm making it for. My work explores loss and its deep connection with space. My canvas consists of repurposing existing street infrastructure, such as light posts or under-utilized space, to prompt community dialogue about ritual, healing, and connection. My goal is to collectively reimagine sites of loss into sacred space, aiming to fuse practical public space design elements with the spiritual. My latest project, “Beyond Memorial” is an art, spatial, and healing justice response to the invisible, yet palpable scars left in spaces of gun violence or community trauma.
Every space has a frequency… Living in New York, my spatial practice and understanding of this focuses primarily on urban environments. I highlight street infrastructure to emanate site-specific stories of loss. Passerbyers resonate with this frequency shift from mundane objects to altars embedded with meaning.
In my Yorùbá spirituality, environmental elements like water are considered deities, or “orishas”. I’m interested in mapping spatial frequencies in more natural environments, like Governors Island, using quantitative (ie. hydrophone, soil testing) and qualitative (ie. drawings, recordings) measures. In doing so, could society begin to reframe or rethink these natural elements as more than just resources, but as spirits? My proposal, “In Search of Ọyá” - the Yorùbá deity who regulates air, winds, lightning, violent storms, life, death, and rebirth - is an investigation to map her frequency on the island absent of urban influence.” http://www.immanueloni.com
THREE RIVERS, MANY SHORELINES
Swale House 11
Workshops and screening of “Rivering”
1-2pm: Sound and observational walk (walking shoes)
2-4pm: Flutter book workshop
4pm: Rivering screening. Rivering documents Marketou’s water bound site responsive installation where six floating sculptures were anchored in the Buttermilk Channel
In this two-part workshop participants will reflect upon the waterways of Governors Island through the creation of a flutter book focused on ideas of kinship and making oneself attune to everyday ecologies. Part one will facilitate a focused sound and observational walk where we will circumnavigate the island and engage the shorelines through deep listening and attentiveness. In part two participants will have the opportunity to reflect on this experience through the making of a flutter book, a type of an accordion book in which the spine is not bound so that all the pages can be viewed simultaneously if so desired. Based upon individual interest pages may include writing, collage, drawing and watercolor with each participant creating their own, unique flutter book responsive to the three rivers surrounding us.
Wendy Brawer is preparing for an upcoming residency at Swale House, with a public event on October 14th! Come by Swale House to participate in an interactive Green Map project about local food systems with Wendy!
Wendy Brawer’s upcoming residency at Swale House begins on October 9th with a public event on October 14th!
Wendy Brawer’s upcoming residency at Swale House begins on October 6th with a public event on October 14th!
“What would it look like if a bakery was self-sustaining? If they had a small plot of land and created desserts with only what could grow in that space, what could be reasonably harvested? What could we make in a day with the wheat threshed and milled, with the eggs gathered from hens, with the butter churned from cream milked from cows? Would it even be possible to have the variety of pastries we’re accustomed to, or would that only be possible with a network of local bakeries and their interconnected farms? And how would the desserts be sweetened—with sugar cane, beet sugar, honey, or other alternatives? What could the soil quality reasonably support? At what point would the associated labor outweigh the point of the desserts in the first place—to be a treat that enhances life with a bit of joy?”
Skakun’s red blood cells are mutated, spherically shaped and fragile; at age five they became severely anemic and underwent an emergency splenectomy. For decades, as a way of survival as a chronically-ill person, they have researched ways to create healthy microbiomes and increase the operation of immune systems in order to improve cell function. The philosophy of their recent body of work is informed by being routinely-sick, learning to walk again after a serious bicycle accident, and regrowth after atrophy. They have explored sculptures as objects of ritual, collaborative movement, and play, ranging from time-based devotions to endurance trainings in order to transform mental and physical states of being. The materials and rituals which aid in maintenance of a disabled body inform the materials and processes used in their sculptures.
Skakun is currently developing the Beneficial Bacteria Biodegradable Milk Polymer, an ever- growing detailed archive of artifacts and recipes for transforming fermented milk into a biodegradable polymer. During one step of the process, the substrate is a nutrient rich source of probiotic food known as milk kefir. In addition to making sculptures out of the biodegradable polymer, they are proceeding with an interactive component which involves sharing SCOBYs (Symbiotic Colonies of Bacteria and Yeast) free and accessible to the public. This is their means of providing free holistic medicine to the public during a global health crisis.
Current Writer in Residence, Diane Ludin.
Summer/Fall 2022 New England Asters and Goldenrod meadows…
Poetry: https://www.amnesiainterrupted.us/
Gloria Ushigua
Gloria Ushigua
Gloria Ushigua is the co-founder of the Sápara women's organization Ashiñwaka, which defends Sápara people's ancestral land and environmental rights in Ecuador. Since 2010, Gloria has been actively defending her territory of untouched jungle in the Amazon, primarily against private and State-owned companies seeking to exploit oil deposits. When Sápara territorial rights were threatened by a government plan to open oil blocks in Ecuador’s Southern Amazon, Gloria led successful efforts to keep the oil in the ground. As a result, she has been threatened, intimidated, judicially harassed, discredited on national television by high public officials and assaulted by law enforcement officers, along with other members of her family.