LEAVINGS
by Nora Almeida
“All matter is performative.”
–Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway
For the last few years, I’ve been creating artwork on the NYC shoreline about people’s relationships to water. Lately I’ve been thinking about what it means to “make” art without producing anything tangible. Maybe because the ephemeral encounter has always been my favorite kind of art but also because when you walk down to the shore anywhere in NYC you’ll find there is so much already there. Waterfronts are sites of accumulation with unique and transient leavings–washed up by tides or left by people. These leavings are what we call garbage, or in the art world “found objects.” During the years I’ve spent engaging with the NYC waterfront–through art, stewardship, and as an open water swimmer–I’ve learned that most of what is left and washed up on our shore is small household plastic: straws, take out containers, candy wrappers, bottle caps, forks, solo cups. And I collect it, increasingly—alone and with other people. At organized events and on cloudy humid afternoons before I go swimming. Mostly I throw it “away” (the fate of plastic is always to remain plastic) but I also have and want to continue to make art–cyanotypes and silkscreens and 3-dimensional work for use in performances and installations–out of these leavings.
There is some value, I think, in making garbage into something else—even temporarily. But I know that after some time has passed, my art, like anything made of recycled material, will only turn back into garbage. In these moments I wish to be an unproductive artist; to make nothing or, somehow, actually erase.
Sometimes I think my art is redundant because, like words, leavings already carry a lot of meaning and have the capacity to transform through simple and sometimes accidental acts of use or time. Seen through this lens, garbage might already be art or even something more useful, like a habitat. Sometimes after a few hours spent cleaning a beach, I’ll look up and find a small patch of the shoreline transformed a little–by me and the tide and the wind and whoever or whatever else has moved inside of that space. Maybe that patch of earth is art. Or maybe art is my body moving along the sand, dragging a garbage bag and my shadow behind me. Maybe it is the residue on my skin–sweat and salt and dirt—destined only to return by way of the ancient NYC sewer system back to the tidal estuary where it originated. Or maybe my art is the performance of my labor. Or the interactions that I have with other people–fishermen, stewards, swimmers, coastal dwellers–who occupy the shoreline while I clean.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nora Almeida is an urban swimmer, writer, performance artist, educator, and activist based in Brooklyn / Lenapehoking. Her art explores intersections of archiving, environmental investigation, and spatial disruption. Recent public artworks—Last Street End in Gowanus (2021), Land Use Intervention Library (2022), and Open Water (ongoing)—focus on relationships between people and environmentally disturbed, post-industrial waterfront spaces.
Website: https://noraalmeida.com
Next Chapter in this Issue: a geology breaks in half to grow — Willa Goettling
PUSH/PULL is an online journal published by Culture Push, a virtual venue that allows us to present a variety of perspectives on civic engagement, social practice, and other issues that need attention. PUSH/PULL helps to situate Fellows and Associated Artists and the work they do within a critical discourse, and acts as a forum for an ongoing dialogue between Culture Push artists, the Culture Push community, and the world at large.