STABILIZING
explores the process of erosion and complexities of entanglement, responding with solidarity in reconnection.
The center will not hold.
As systems erode, natural complexities long hidden are revealed. And in so doing, expire. We become aware of the insatiety and instability of our infrastructure, made bare by the consequences of its own construction.
As a water resource engineer, I am responsible for responding to erosion - marks left by a slow creep or instantaneous inundation. When a force overwhelms the stability of a landscape, the flow detaches and transports soil until it becomes too heavy to migrate, dispersing what was once whole across another unfamiliar field in flood.
Advancing erosion gives cue something upstream has changed.
As I have moved across the United States, this process is seen at different stages in each neighborhood.
Trajectories of communities jolt with oscillations of influx and drought of cash, competition, outside desire, inside solidarity. Blocks teeter between being long forgotten after historic extractive uses and the speculative municipal, commercial abuse of how to make new use.
As systems erode, natural complexities long hidden are revealed. And in so doing, expire. We become aware of the insatiety and instability of our infrastructure, made bare by the consequences of its own construction.
As a water resource engineer, I am responsible for responding to erosion - marks left by a slow creep or instantaneous inundation. When a force overwhelms the stability of a landscape, the flow detaches and transports soil until it becomes too heavy to migrate, dispersing what was once whole across another unfamiliar field in flood.
Advancing erosion gives cue something upstream has changed.
As I have moved across the United States, this process is seen at different stages in each neighborhood.
Trajectories of communities jolt with oscillations of influx and drought of cash, competition, outside desire, inside solidarity. Blocks teeter between being long forgotten after historic extractive uses and the speculative municipal, commercial abuse of how to make new use.
How do we stabilize our right to resilience + self determination?
Tangled roots strain to tap a source that is no longer in reach. When the ground falls away, what will hold on and what will let go? Does the first tree to fall in the breaking ground tear away the knotted others along with it? Is it the fault of the first to go or is the first to go the fault of another?
Resistance or susceptibility to the threat of detachment / transport is dependent on our bonds and the complexity of our relationships. Highly textured, rooted ground with lush canopy coverage remains intact for another season.
I believe there is power and solidarity in knowing where we are, what building stood across the street eight decades ago, who else has recognized your front door as their own, what soil was moved to make way for it all.
