Bodega Boat Basin

Nancy Nowacek

Bodega Boat Basin, a boat-turned-storefront-awning (and vice-versa) is a modest monument to the future of Red Hook. It is a hand-made boat hanging from a symbolic bodega storefront that becomes a gateway to a community gathering space celebrating Red Hook’s self-reliance, strength, innovation and courage to meet climate challenges. Young people of Red Hook will be invited to participate in building the boat, as well as the storefront from which it hangs. All members of the community will be invited to collaborate in the creation of a small series of 3–5 events celebrating and brainstorming the future of the neighborhood.

Bodega Boat Basin is a monument to a time in the future where community infrastructure has evolved in ways large and small to live with sea level rise. Everyday parts of the neighborhood become functional in ways they hadn’t before: building awnings become floating structures. A bodega becomes a boat, both literal and metaphoric. It serves as the center of social exchange where every member of the community is invited to share their opinions and ideas about their neighborhood while picking up an iced coffee, egg sandwich, toilet paper, or soda. It is a symbol of how Red Hook can lead the city forward in environmental adaptation and community regeneration.

I propose to install this work on the shore of the East River in the southeast corner of Valentino Park, in order to be able to be as close to the water as possible, so that it can become a participant in the community gatherings. Over the course of the installation, I plan to work with members of the community, Red Hook Initiative, and Pioneer Works to create a series of 3–5 events and actions that speak to Red Hook’s environmental past and future. I imagine after school activities, weekend barbecues and brainstorming nights, but I want to the community’s needs, frustrations, and desires around Climate Change define what happens on site.

Over the course of the installation, the boat will be lowered from it’s role as awning and carried to the water for launching at Valentino Pier, and anyone who lives in Red Hook will be invited to meet the water, and learn how to row.

DETAILS

The Boat

The boat is a symbol of Red Hook’s maritime history. No doubt before heavy industrialization and containerization every Red Hook resident commuted, fished, or worked in boats. Since the city turned its back on the water, this is no longer the case. I can say, personally, that until a couple years ago, I had never seen a wooden row boat up close, let alone built or rowed in one. Interacting with New York in this way has changed my relationship to the City and to the water. I respect the water more than I fear it now because helping to build a boat — and turning flat pieces of wood into a rounded shape that floats — allowed me a more empowered relationship to it, and I want to share that with my neighbors in Red Hook.

The Bodega

The bodega, a symbol of Brooklyn, is the functional heart of the neighborhood. It is the place that everyone, no matter age, race, or values, goes and needs. It is an anchor of social exchange — hanging out front, getting candy after school, receiving packages, dropping off keys for a friend, running in for soda, toilet paper, cat food or milk. It is the one space that joins us all together, but it is also under threat. The bodega is trying to survive a different kind of climate change: the economic shifts of the city. It is also a symbol of scrappiness, fight and determination to hold ground in the face of global forces. This project will feature a wooden Bodega facade that will define an outdoor space to be used for community actions and gatherings. Recognizing that it’s use will be limited to cooperative weather in the late summer and fall, I hope to engage the Bodegas on Van Brunt Street for some project components in the wintertime months.

The Basin: A Platform for Community Gathering

Boat construction will be lead by partners from the Community Village Boathouse, an organization that has 10 years in teaching community members to build and row boats in the city.

I plan to work with members of the community as well as Red Hook Initiative and Pioneer Works to collaborate on 3–5 events that speak to the needs, frustrations, and deep desires for the future of the neighborhood. I have a long history of involvement and partnership with Pioneer Works — I was a resident in 2013, and have collaborated on an event series and a radio show for the past two years — and they have agreed to join me to partner in facilitating community participation and event structure. I have long admired all the ways in which Red Hook Initiative supports the neighborhood, and have recently begun working with them around a parallel project that celebrates the community’s resiliency. I am hoping to grow my relationship with them through this project.

Sample events

To be determined with community and partner input

Simultaneous with construction, I would like to meet with community members at the Red Hook library branch, Red Hook Initiative, and Pioneer Works to brainstorm and explore possible event topics. Once installation is complete, events will be planned in and around the project site. The following are a few ideas of potential topics and activities that could happen on site.

• Red Hook 2050 visioning with youth facilitated by More&More Unlimited (Marina Zurkow, Sarah Rothenberg, Surya Matthu)
• Creating resource maps for distribution around the neighborhood, facilitated by RHI Local Leaders
• Adaptation actions
• Planning for regeneration lead by local design and climate change educators: How will resources shift in the future? What jobs could be created by Climate Change? How can the waterways serve the future of Red Hook? How can our family culture, corner culture, and park culture become empowered change agents?

Background

In my experience living in Red Hook, I have found myself at many times overwhelmed by Climate Change predictions.

What is a neighborhood inundated for 5 years with water and its after effects to do about the future when it can’t seem to fully move on? How do people exhausted and frustrated, still living with hurricane Sandy on a daily basis — in their homes, in their memories, in anxiety about the next Sandy — embrace the future? How, and where, does a community come together before the next emergency thrusts them together? Who sees themselves as part of the community, and who does not?

These were my initial questions in approaching this project opportunity. Instead of lingering on the victimhood of Climate Change, or the terrifying predictions of its impact on our day-to-day lives in Brooklyn, I turned my attention to the strength with which Red Hook rose to meet in the aftermath of Sandy, and its position to lead the rest of the city in the march towards an ever-changing future. Recovery and resiliency are only the beginning: the real work — and opportunity for everyone in Red Hook — is in adaptation and regeneration.

So how can Red Hook adapt to Climate Change? To adapt is to ‘to make fit (as for a new use) often by modification’; and regeneration is spoken of in religious texts as a passing from death to life, and a renewal of the mind. Adaptation — a change in habits, a change in the design of our lives — is made possible by regeneration, a shifted mindset. And vice-versa. These practices need to happen on every scale: from the very small and personal to the very large and societal. I have also witnessed disconnects between policy and reality. So my approach to this project focuses on empowerment by imagining modest future adaptations that would symbolize a community living — and thriving — with Climate Change. Bodega Boat Basin is my imagination of a neighborhood feature 20–50 years in the future, whose form or experience could be effected by Climate Change.

The central theme of my work is claiming power through the body by engaging systems of daily life: transportation, digital technology, and architecture, among many others. I believe that our physical engagement with the world determines the sense of control, impact, and power we have in and over it. I make works that intervene into these systems with my body to affirm my physical capacity to act in the world.

As a social practice artist, my works often invite others to participate. I am frequently drawn to ideas that are more than one body can accomplish, which makes collaboration and cooperation central to my practice. An example: since 2012, inspired by Red Hook, my neighborhood of 8 years, I have been working on Citizen Bridge. Citizen Bridge is a temporary bridge between RH and Governors Island (as they once were by a sandbar), that will invite people to reclaim the waterways as public space. Citizens will do this by walking out into the harbor, in the process negotiating a relationship to water. Since Hurricane Sandy, the project has expanded to claim power in the face of climate change.

Bodega Boat Basin springs forth from these goals. It is a project inspired 100% by love and respect for Red Hook and it is a project that could only happen here.