Peninsular Circumstances

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

To live on a peninsula means to have one’s life intimately linked to the rhythm of a landscape that continuously negotiates between oceans and dry land. Red Hook has its name from the wet red clay it was made of before Dutch explorers transformed the landscape with landfill. Looking at Red Hook today, the peninsula can function as a metaphor for a transitional moment in time. Jakob Kudsk Steensen proposes to develop an interactive virtual reality model of the landscape, where past and future eco-systems and climate conditions intertwine with local inhabitants’ imaginations of the future of the area.

The work will be developed by interviewing local inhabitants in Red Hook, about how they view the area. Following these conversations will be workshops, which focus on how inhabitants imagine and think about the future of Red Hook’s landscape. Based on these conversations and workshops, Jakob Kudsk Steensen will develop futuristic virtual replica of selected areas of Red Hook in a scale of 1–1. These futuristic areas will also include plants and geological features from Red Hook’s history as well as visualizations of its future climate. In this way, the virtual environment will weave together imaginations of future landscapes with the past.

The work itself will be available to visitors at parks and piers in Red Hook. On these locations will be signs, which contain maps and text extracts from Steensen’s conversations with locals about their imaginations of Red Hook. The sign will also contain a link that allows people to easily access, with their smartphones, a virtual tour of the futuristic landscape of Red Hook. The virtual tour will also be accessible online through a website, where it is also possible to download the interactive VR and laptop versions of the digital simulation.

This public art project seeks to develop an experience, where Red Hook becomes a bridge that leads us into an environment, where the past meets imaginations of the future.