Performing Infrastructure

Performing Infrastructure is a workshop/performance in which participants make a “human diagram” of the water system that visualizes and embodies the connections between its parts. Each participant takes on a role: reservoir, aqueduct, forested mountain, water tunnel, water treatment plant, or faucet. They form the connections between the parts of the system with their arms and hands, and then create an “infrastructure orchestra” in which they vocalize the water flowing through the system. This project viscerally illustrates that water is a social connector, and that there are human relationships embodied in this infrastructural landscape.

This project has been performed, presented, and exhibited since 2017, including at the New School and Columbia University, for the NYC Parks Department with the Urban Field Station, at the Queens Museum and ICA Boston, at OCAD Gallery (Toronto) and Onomatopee (Netherlands), at the La Casita Verde community garden, at LMCC’s Governors Island Art Center, and elsewhere. You can read an essay about it in Diagrams of Power (Onomatopee, 2019).