Backbone > Lucid Dreaming

Take Me to the River
by Beth Elaine Wilson Photo by Marlis Momber

It the scenic overlook of the Hudson River in Boscobel’s immaculately groomed garden in Garrison, there’s been a recent addition, which from a distance appears to be one of those large, swiveling commercial binoculars one sees at tourist sites that offer a closer view in exchange for a quarter. But of course the impeccable taste of those governing Boscobel Restoration’s historic site wouldn’t permit such a kitschy travesty—and in fact, the viewer now installed there is part of an artwork by Matts Leiderstam, one of a series of works organized by the New York City-based public art organization Minetta Brook that focus on various aspects of the Hudson River.

Collectively called “Watershed”, this ambitious, multi-year public art program springs from the same root (and many of the same people) that brought the new Dia:Beacon museum to the region. In stark contrast with the long-term, historically focused character of that institution, local real estate developer and former Tallix Foundry director Lee Balter wanted to commission a group of “interactive sculpture somewhat hidden in state parks, waiting to be discovered by kids who visit the park.” As it is now being realized, the project is not just kid stuff anymore. Most of the works share a strong conceptual element, and many attempt to ask serious questions about our relationship with the River and the surrounding area.

Leiderstam’s View involves two standing binocular-viewers, one at Boscobel and one at North Dock in Bear Mountain State Park on the opposite shore, which, in addition to framing classic views of the Hudson River, first made famous by 19th-century painters, filter the view through colored lenses based on “Claude Lorrain” glasses popular with both artists and tourists back then as a tool to locate “the picturesque.” A button on Leiderstam’s viewer allows you to click through the scene as it is cast in cyan blue, sepia-pink, golden brown, or transparent black. What the work highlights is a rather shocking shift from being in the environment to looking at a fragment of it—one moment you experience a scenic panorama that envelops your peripheral vision, in which you feel a spatial proximity to the mountains and the river, despite their distance, and in the blink of an eye (through the viewer) that relationship is radically transformed into a technologically contrived composition of the landscape, as it is reduced to a mere picture.

Christian Philipp Müller’s Hudson Valley Tastemakers (previewed in Chronogram last January) is perhaps the most ambitious piece in the “Watershed” program. The sculptural element of the piece is a 100-foot-long, minimalist steel-sided ramp/planter (ranging from one foot deep at one end to about four at the other), filled with soil from the six mid-Hudson counties—soil yielded by land being converted from agriculture to tract housing “development”. (Now there’s an evil euphemism!) The amount of space devoted to each county’s soil reflects the amount of agricultural land still in use in each: the largest is Columbia County, which takes up over 25 feet in the deepest end of the planter, while Putnam is represented by a shockingly miniscule 10-inch-wide swath of the shallow end. Various vegetables and edible flowers have been planted in the piece, which can be seen on the Bard College campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, just off Robbins Road, on the way to the new Fisher Center.

Something comes unhinged, however, along the way. While the intention and direct effect of the piece in its expanded sense represents some of the best tendencies in contemporary art (by actively seeking to connect with those outside its usual “loop”), its presentation in the larger context of “Watershed” warps—and undercuts—its ultimate significance.

As discussed in my recent columns about Dia:Beacon, we are facing a new, art-tourism- driven juggernaut in the Hudson Valley. This new tsunami of development, financed by some very deep pockets, will create spectacular investment opportunities for a few, while many lower- profile, nameless poor and working-class members of our communities are being displaced by the rapidly rising real estate values in the area. Especially around Beacon, this phenomenon is directly driven by the new art institutions—namely Dia:Beacon, and the ancillary “Watershed” project. So Müller’s Hudson Valley Tastemakers, so lovingly and genuinely dedicated to preserving the agricultural traditions and way of life in our region, is itself part of a project that functions on an institutional level to reduce the land—the soil, a source of life—to an inflated price tag per acre in the real estate section of the New York Times, thereby exacerbating the problem he seeks to address. The overall project “succeeds” in the same way Leiderstam’s binoculars do.

Most of this difficulty stems from the top-down nature of the curatorial program of “Watershed”. Diane Shamash, director of Minetta Brook and the primary producer of the project, is renowned in artworld circles for her connections. She has developed an organizational infrastructure that relies upon strategic partnering with major institutions, from Dia to Scenic Hudson to the state government to the colleges of the region (Marist, SUNY New Paltz, Vassar, Bard, and even Harvard). What is gained by relying upon this structure is access and influence; what is lost, unfortunately, is meaningful input of those from more spontaneous (and more generally authentic) communities in the area, whether it’s local artists’ organizations, grassroots environmental groups like Clearwater, or community groups representing the very people being displaced by this sort of art-driven development.

As the old saw goes, “the map is not the territory.” Yet the drawing of maps is, fundamentally, an exercise of power. That distant, God’s eye perspective is appealing—authoritative, clearly defined, easy to articulate. Yet the reality “on the ground” is often the opposite—provisional, contradictory, often hard to define. For that very reason, the only way to fully understand a place is to spend some time there, and to resist (or at least question) the culturally mediated meanings and readings assigned to our experience of it.

Ironically, some of the artists included in “Watershed” deeply comprehend this difficult lesson. Matthew Buckingham’s film Muhheakantuck—Everything has a Name is a searching meditation on the European colonization of the Hudson. The narrator asserts at one point that “Everything has a name, but who does the naming when it is assumed the places have no name? He [Henry Hudson] did not know what names the people of this country had for the place.” Buckingham recognizes the power implicit in naming a place, and the displacement of the existing reality that it engenders. Somehow this realization is OK when it takes place at a safe, historical remove, but the “Watershed” program as a whole seems incapable of applying this insight to itself. This leads to individual works that can be successful on their own terms, but that ultimately fail when presented in a context that does not adequately reflect their content. It’s like the lifelong smoker who intellectually understands the dangers involved, but fails to make the effort to quit anyway.

The kernel of the whole project, and perhaps the work that remains truest to the project’s stated purpose, is George Trakas’ transformation of the abandoned Beacon Landing (used by the ferry to Newburgh but disused since completion of the bridge) into a public space designed explicitly to encourage visitors to come in more intimate contact with the river. A lifelong sailor himself, Trakas has done a number of similar projects around the world—and of course, the sailing brotherhood is a particularly strong, if mobile, example of community. But Trakas didn’t just pop in, take a look at the property, and crank out his proposal. He literally spent a year with the site, living in Beacon and intimately getting to know that particular stretch of the river. Based on his detailed study, he is building decks, dock areas, and stairways leading to the water, as well as a community boathouse and landing for small vessels. A handicapped-accessible fishing pier and granite steps will increase safe public access to the river while preventing deterioration of the shoreline. Trakas has taken both the care and the time needed to understand the place and the community that will use the facility. It’s a pity that the organizers of the overall “Watershed” project have not done the same. “Watershed: The Hudson Valley Art Project,” works by various artists at locations throughout the Hudson Valley, including Bear Mountain, Yorktown Heights, Beacon, Garrison, and Annandale-on-Hudson, through December 2005. Field guides and more information available at Minetta Brook Office and Exhibition Space, 4-6 South Chestnut Street, Beacon. 831-4129 or visit www.minettabrook.org.