Wet Networks is supported by Taipei Cultural Center in New York and is mainly organized by the Queens Museum (QM) and is presented in partnership with Rhizome and CycleX. It features artifacts and commissioned projects from Geek Camp 2021: Neversink Never Ever. The output of Geek Camp, Wet Networks is installed alongside the Queens Museum’s long-term exhibition of The Relief Map of New York City’s Water Supply System at the Watershed Gallery.
Taking place in July 2021, this was the first of Taiwanese artist Shu Lea Cheang’s annual “Geek Camp” convening, at CycleX, an experimental farm and cultural center located in what is today known as the town of Andes, New York. Shu Lea Cheang invites curator, Celine Wong Katzman to gather a group of artists for the camp. She chose artists whose practices resonated with the context of the watershed to take part in the camp at the site located just a few miles uphill from where the East Branch of the Delaware River feeds the Pepacton reservoir.
The artists, Tecumseh Ceaser, Nabil Hassein, Melanie Hoff, Christopher Lin, Jan Mun, and TJ Shin considered Cheang’s prompts to walk the trails, consider the ebbs and flows of the reservoir, and engage waves as carriers to recall buried, bittersweet sentiments of displacement and relocation. They were joined by Erwin A. Karl, mycologist and Evan T. Pritchard, Founder of the Center for Algonquin Culture. Together their reflections and offerings illuminate the relationships between new technologies and traditional ways of knowing, the challenges of collective care, and how land and water shape and are shaped by one another and us.
About the Artist, Shu Lea Cheang
Shu Lea Cheang 鄭淑麗 (b. 1954, Taiwan) is an artist and filmmaker currently based in Paris, and who often travels to the United States to spend time at CycleX, her recently-formed artist residency and media lab in Andes, New York. Cheang is a pioneering figure in internet art whose multimedia approach includes film, video, installation, software interaction and durational performance. Employing multidisciplinary techniques, Cheang seeks to challenge the positions taken by the popular media, institutions and the government.
About the Queens Museum
QM was established as an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit in 1972 by a group of community leaders seeking to create a vibrant cultural center in Flushing Meadows Corona Park (FMCP). Housed in the historic New York City Building—the City’s official pavilion during the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs, and the temporary former home of the UN General Assembly—our galleries overlook the Unisphere—the unofficial emblem of Queens. From this historically relevant past, QM is now a vibrant community center that welcomes individuals of all ages, abilities, linguistic preferences, socio-economic backgrounds to engage with the diverse programs and resources that the museum has to offer. QM works to ensure our exhibitions, education initiatives, and public programs are fully accessible to all individuals that visit the museum and utilize our resources each year.
About Geek Camp
Geek Camp 2021 was supported by CycleX and Rhizome. CycleX is a non-profit intercultural land trust located in Andes NY, dedicated to cross-disciplinary artistic and farming pursuits with a focus on nurturing future farmers. CycleX engages in biodiversity, mycology, and permaculture, and is a free-form laboratory where plants and fungi are acknowledged as both food and medicine.
Exhibition:
Title: Wet Networks
Date: October 30, 2021- August 14, 2022
Venue: The Queens Museum, (New York City Building Flushing Meadows Corona Park Queens, NY 11368)
Website: queensmuseum.org