<div dir="ltr">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(26,26,26)">Thanks Amanda, </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(26,26,26)"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font color="#1a1a1a" face="Arial" size="2">Yes, I believe I started focusing on water
because I grew up in a farming town where the drinking water was polluted with DDT, a
Dow chemical made for warfare, and then mass produced as a pesticide. When
water privatization became one of the final frontiers of the
commodities market, it was a subject that (ahem) seeped into my work. But I’ve
always been engaged with questions of economy, specifically how we can live
more interdependently and less solely on commodities markets. When I
moved to New York and most everything in my life became monetized, making
living systems or ecosystems was a form of survival masked as art-as-life. Then it
became art for the sake of learning from the experiment, and at some point along
the way I hope it has become more poetic. With Swale, I’m honing in on food</font><font color="#1a1a1a" face="Arial" size="2">. It could be about my health in part (probably most everything we do stems from the very personal). Living with Celiac I’m more conscious
than ever about the importance of healthy food and systems – and permaculture merges
economy and health: after an initial investment of time (and in urban centers,
money) food forests eventually care for themselves, and you, in an undeniable way. </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(26,26,26)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(26,26,26)">Swale will be a floating food forest where people can visit and
pick fresh free food. It’s a resource and a more utopian proposal for New York:
what if food was a public service? The hope is that it will become a permanent fixture. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial">Shu, thank
you for bringing us back to this all too real future scenario. Since the
present is already far from great, the future of food is therefore all levels
of disturbing. I wonder what will happen with the Svalbard Seed Bank in 2030.
Will Monsanto and the Gates Foundation patent the entire collection of genetic
material they have collected? Will they continue to alter the material and conduct new tests on humans around the world, and by proxy, everything
else? Will we continue to let them? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial">So as to
eventually fall asleep at night, I tend to look for something to grasp onto
throughout the bleak, murky psycho-corporate oligopolies, and more recently
it’s been companies like Greenwave (<a href="http://greenwave.org">http://greenwave.org</a>)
that offer some sort of temporary respite - the business focused on
multi-species 3D ocean farms “aiming to restore ocean ecosystems and create
jobs in coastal communities by transforming fishers into restorative ocean
farmers.” Co-owned urban farms that profit share is also a powerful movement
that gives me <i>hope</i> – which, growing up as a US citizen, I have been trained to want so badly. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial">I’m also keen
on saline farming – how much salinity can fruits and vegetables tolerate and
for how long? Can we do more growing in saltwater marshes if we are surrounded
by ocean yet have little fresh water? Could this provide some respite for California?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial"><a href="http://www.futurefarmonline.com.au/farm-research/farming-saline-land">http://www.futurefarmonline.com.au/farm-research/farming-saline-land</a>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial">I’ll leave on
this succinct note, “Industrial fertilization is the science of ignorance.” –
Vandana Shiva</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial"> </span></p>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 11:41 AM, Amanda McDonald Crowley <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:amandamcdc@gmail.com" target="_blank">amandamcdc@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Mary,<div><br></div><div>By way of further introduction, I thought I might bring to the attention of this discussion list your current project, Swale, that you'll be working on over the summer 2016 in New York City. I wonder if you might introduce the project a little. <a href="http://www.swaleny.org/" target="_blank">http://www.swaleny.org/</a></div><div><br></div><div>And perhaps it would also be useful to give some background to a particular thread in many of your works: I am thinking of the works that I see as related, that began with The Waterpod Project, which led to a series of other works: Flock House Project New York,Triple Island, Flock House Project Omaha, and Wetland. In each of these projects, growing food as part of the infrastructure of the project was a key element to the "live / work" nature of each of these art projects.</div><div><br></div><div>With Swale, your attention is turned more specifically to growing food on a public floating "park". So in essence food seems to be the core concern of this work, where previously it was part of an integrated system, something I've heard you describe as a living system. Can you describe a little why this concept of a living system has become so central to much of your art practice?</div><div><br></div><div>Amanda</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><span><font color="#888888"><font size="1">Studio: 20 Jay St. #204 Brooklyn, NY 11201 <a href="http://www.marymattingly.com" target="_blank">www.marymattingly.com</a><br><br></font></font></span></div></div></div></div>
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