Roger Deakin, Waterlog:
‘The warm rain tumbled from the gutter in one of those midsummer downpours as I hastened across the lawn behind my house in Suffolk and took shelter in the moat. Breast-stroking up and down the thirty yards of clear, green water, I nosed along, eyes just at water level … The best moments were when the storm intensified, drowning birdsong, and a haze rose off the water as though the moat itself were rising to meet the lowering sky.’
‘In the water you are immersed in an intensely private world … I can dive in with a long face and what feels like a terminal case of depression and emerge a whistling idiot.’
John Cheever, ‘The Swimmer’:
‘To be embraced and sustained by the light green water was less a pleasure, it seemed, than the resumption of a natural condition … The day was lovely, and that he lived in a world so generously supplied with water seemed like a clemency, a beneficence.’
BOOKS
Bauman, Zygmunt (2000) Liquid Modernity, Cambridge: Polity.
Calvino, Italo (1978) Invisible Cities, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Cheever, John (1990) Collected Stories, London: Vintage.
Conrad, Joseph (1999) Heart of Darkness, Penguin. Originally published 1903.
Deakin, Roger (2000) Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey Through Britain, London: Vintage.
Fishman, Charles (2011) The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, New York: Free Press.
Hall, Max (1986) The Charles: The People’s River, Olympic Marketing.
Haglund, Karl (2003) Inventing the Charles River, Boston: MIT Press.
Kastner, Jeff, ed. (1998) Land and Environmental Art, London: Phaidon.
Lynch, Kevin (1992) The Image of the City, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Macfarlane, Robert (2007) The Wild Places, London: Penguin.
Piene, Otto, ed. (1976) You are Here, Boston Celebrations: Environmental Art, Cambridge: MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies/Institute of Contemporary Art.
Rew, Kate & Tyler, Dominic (2008) Wild Swim: River, Lake, Lido and Sea, London: Guardian Books.
WEBSITES
Amphicar http://www.amphicar.com
Charles River Conservancy Agency http://www.thecharles.org
Copenhagen Suborbitals http://copenhagensuborbitals.com
Floating fishing villages in Asia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_village
long-established communities which exist entirely on, and from, the water
Great Pacific Garbage Patch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
The Green Museum http://www.greenmuseum.org
MIT Museum Hart Nautical Collection http://web.mit.edu/museum/collections/nautical.html
Open Sailing http://opensailing.net
Outdoor Swimming Society http://www.outdoorswimmingsociety.com
People Powered Submarine http://www.greenmuze.com/climate/travel/1044-people-powered-submarine-.html
Suikinkutsu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suikinkutsu
Traditional Japanese stream musical instrument (designed to be visually hidden and to delight listeners by the sounds coming from under the ground; water flow used to change the perception of a place)
ARTISTS & ARCHITECTS
Ala Plastica http://www.alaplastica.org.ar
Lise Autogena http://www.autogena.org
Matthew Buckingham http://www.matthewbuckingham.net
Muhheakantuck – history of the Hudson, flight along the Hudson
Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon http://irational.org/kayle/#
Avon Canoe Pilot
Vincent Callebaut http://vincent.callebaut.org/
Lilypad – a floating ecopolis for climate refugees
Marcus Coates http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/photography%20%26%20film/film%20art/art349481
The Trip – an imaginary trip down in the Amazon in a canoe with a terminally ill patient
Susan Derges www.susanderges.com
worked at night, placing photographic paper on the river bed and allowing the images to be exposed through ambient light, aided by the use of a flash gun. Publications: Woman Thinking River,1998, Liquid Form,1999.
Diller and Scofido: Blur Building http://www.dillerscofidio.com/
Mark Dion http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/artnow/markdion/default.shtm
Tate Thames Dig, 2000
Olafur Eliasson http://www.olafureliasson.net
Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison http://www.theharrisonstudio.net
Watersheds, river restorations, Global Warming and rising water levels
Mitchell Joachim River Gym http://www.archinode.com/gym.html
Antti Laitinen http://www.anttilaitinen.com/
A Sound Map of the Housatonic River
Lone Twin http://www.theboatproject.com/
Building a boat from donated wood with stories – a seaworthy archive of memories
Marie Lorenz and Diana Stevenson http://www.marielorenz.com/upriver
Photo essay of a 3 day journey on the Hudson in a homemade boat
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer http://www.lozano-hemmer.com
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/B/bigart/latest_news.html#cardigan
Cardigan – Turbulence – floating 127 buoys in the river Teifi’s centre along with a loudspeaker and an LED light source.
Frank Lloyd Wright: Fallingwater http://www.fallingwater.org/
Makrolab http://makrolab.ljudmila.org
Dominique Mazeaud http://www.earthheartist.com
Cleansing of the Rio Grande – 7 year monthly project
Matthew Mazotta http://matthewmazzotta.com/home.html
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba
http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/jun-nguyen-hatsushiba/
Outlandia http://www.outlandia.com
Erik Pirolt, Trond N. Perry and Stian Pollestad, Kysa, DIY artists boat http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJLhxDBf-IE&NR=1&feature=endscreen
Platform http://www.platformlondon.org
Still Waters, 1992 – 2001 – imagining London’s buried rivers – the Walbrook and the Effra confined to sewers and storm drains, installing a school water turbine
Marjetica Potrc
Three Gorges Project (artistic responses to)
http://nasher.duke.edu/exhibitions_displacement.php
Chen Qiulin, Yun-Fei Ji, Liu Xiaodong and Zhuang Hui
Tobias Putrih
http://gregorpodnar.com/_index.php?p=p_65&sName=tobias-putrih
Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas
Gediminas Urbonas & Nader Tehrani, Liquid Archive
http://arts.mit.edu/fast/fast-light/liquid-archive
Wet Sounds http://www.wetsounds.co.uk
Hector Zamora Geometrias Daninhas (2006) http://www.lsd.com.mx/
pvc pipes and water lilies, Ibirapuera lake, São Paulo – Brasil in How to live together – 27th São Paulo Biennial
“Harmful geometries” is an intervention at the Ibirapuera lake based on the 2220 square meters of water hyacinth contained by 51 octagonal structures of pvc pipes. The authorization to place the water hyacinths was cancelled on September 25th, 2006. The octagonal structures are still floating on the lake.
FILMS