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Trust Art is a social platform that is commissioning
ten public artworks over the next year. People are invited to
become shareholders with $1, share with interested friends, and renew culture.

Recycling of Life at Industrial Wastelands

A public project led by artist Dave Olsen

Project Proposal

For the duration of the performance, the site, located in the the waterways of Greenpoint, Brooklyn (the confluences of the East River and Newton Creek), will be converted into evaporation fields for sea salt harvesting. The waterways of Greenpoint, site to an underground oil spill estimated at 17-30 million gallons, is considered one of the most polluted bodies of water in North America. While the salt processed out of the water is naturally occurring, the industrial backdrop to the site cannot but remind the viewer of the variety of other material that may be present.

The evaporation process will be conducted on floating salt pans and expose the hidden material ature of the site, removing the water, and crystallizing the soluble contents. Installed at the site will be a series of 7’x12’ salt pans formed using modified barrels and rubber pond liner and waterproof fabric. Each pan will allow a small amount of water to be thinly spread across the surface. In the heat of the summer, the sun will evaporate the water, depositing the salts and minerals dissolved therein.

The deposits will be scraped off the surface during the harvesting, and collected for use as a crystal material. For a period beginning late this summer, through the fall of this year, Vulture will work daily to harvest salt from the site.

Because of the industrial pollution throughout the area, our relationship to it is contradictory. While the harvesting process will expose the salt, a necessary supplement, its purity will be called into question by the industrial surroundings. The presence of the material will foster the bodily recognition of the toxicity of the site as we contemplate the ramifications of its consumption and the irreparability of industrial pollution.

Resources

10,000 - Land
Land where the floating sculptures can be constructed, and that will provide access to the water.

$3,000 - Materials
Materials needed: drum barrels, leather, rubber, waterproof fabric, lumber, crystals.)

$2,000 - Art Handling and Storage
To store the sculptures in Brooklyn

$3,000 - Artist Time

$3,000 - Documentation

---------------------------------------------------

Value of total resources needed = $21,000

 

Timeline



August 2009
Building Salt Fields

September 2009
Performing salt harvesting

Winter 2009-10
Making sculptures

Spring 2010
Trust Art Auction

Locations


Bushwick Inlet


About the Artist

Dave Olsen graduated with a BA from Colby College in 2004 and a MFA from Mass Art in Boston in 2008.

Understanding life as a material cycle, with death as its stagnation, the human relationship to the natural world becomes clear to Dave. By rejecting his human identity and morphing into a vulture, he shields himself from the stagnant death of the man-made world in order to resurrect the life that once flowed. Conjoining both our knowledge and ignorance of the natural world, Dave explores the possibilities of life-renewal in the expanded field of materiality and the unknown. In his knowledge of the horrors of the post-Katrina Gulf Coast, the hopeful beauty of a salmon death-orgy, and the tragedy of impending mineral extraction, he renounces a life of death. Dave lives a life of hope and renewal, devoid of fear.

Artist's Past Work




Blood Transfusion, 2007
Dave drew blood from his body and injected into the carcass of a Beluga whale in an attempt to reactivate life in the whale. He used his alter-ego, Vulture to shield himself from the growing toxins in the dead animal.




Rain Barrow (life gift for the kid), 2007
Forged steel, wood, stoneware, waxed canvas 26’’ x 27’’ x 19’’.




Vulture Seeds life in Bio2007
Vulture generates a ferment of a dead rat and seeds the microbes of that ferment in the plaza at the entranceway to the Boston Convention and Exposition Center a few days before the beginning of the 2007 Biotech Convention. The participants in the summit gather the microbes as they cross the plaza, bringing the new beginning of life into the industry that generates death through its attempts to manipulate and control natural cycles.




Filter Vessel Placement, 2008
Vulture in action.




Vulture, installed with planter bags, 2007
Deactivated.



Public Wall

Wastelands - Left
Wasteland - Right1

From The Artist

Wasteland - Right2

Your Voice

« Floating Evaporators | Main
Friday
Feb202009

The First Industrial Wasteland

57 years ago, oil slowly began leaking into Newton Creek, the horribly polluted little industrial waterway that separates Greenpoint from Long Island City. Today, there is somewhere between 17 and 30 million gallons of oil lining the bottom of the creak along a 4 mile stretch.

Where Newton Creek meets the East River, there is a series of sites that will be the future home of Dave's floating salt flats. Throughout August and September, Dave will build a series of floating sculptures that will evaporate water from these estuaries, leaving the salt behind. The salt will of course be horribly polluted just like the water, but the pollution is made manifest in a form that is much closer to our bodily consumption.

I talked with Dave about how he sees the public use of these waters hplaying out as he is constructing and performing the piece. He envisions a place people can come 'hang out' and experience first hand the primitive process of collecting salt from the water. Please contact us if you are interested in participating.

DateFebruary 20, 2009 at 15:12 | Comment3 Comments

References (2)

References allow you to track sources for this article, as well as articles that were written in response to this article.
  • Source
    Source: The Big Spill
  • Response
    Response: Candy Gift Baskets
    by Jake at Chocolate Gift Baskets on June 24, 2010
    Gift Baskets with wide selection of Corporate gift baskets, Candy Gift, Food gift, Gourmet gift baskets, Chocolate gift baskets, Birthday gift baskets designed for any occasion and every budget.

Reader Comments (3)

In how we choose to heal our own industrial excess, this is the path less taken.

May 19, 2009 | Registered CommenterFame Theory

The body of water you are discussing is the Newtown Creek, not to be confused with the polluted Newton Creek in Jersey.

December 3, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterthe spelling police

I like this post very much. I will go to share this in my twitter page...

microwave rice cooker.

April 27, 2010 | Unregistered CommenterGobis

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