Washing Dirty Water
Mierle Laderman Ukeles has lived long enough to see her children grow up and leave home. The same process is taking place regarding the innovative 'maintenance' art she introduced forty years ago. While Ukeles remains the dynamic an art maverick she was, she now enjoys the company of younger female artists like Lillian Ball who are expanding and enriching the feminist perspective on environmental remediation that Ukeles introduced in the 70s.
Everyday housekeeping chores remain the focus of a major project that Ball recently completed in the Bronx, New York. Instead of focusing on dirty floors, diapers, and urban solid waste, Ball’s work interacts with dirty water flowing off of rooves and parking lots, collecting spilled oil and litter, dissolving toxins, and dumping this mess into the Bronx River. These maintenance chores are not being conducted by humans. Instead, Ball deploys specially selected plants and soil microbes to transform polluted water into clean water.The remedial function of plants,like the clean-up role of mothers and sanitation workers, is sorely unacknowledged in contemporary culture. Yet they are essential to the health of the city.
Ball’s art practice combines pragmatics with aesthetics. Regarding the pragmatics, she collaborted with engineers to break the costly convention of constructing underground storage tanks to mediate sewer overflows during rain. Instead, a rock-lined pool was designed to slow and settle the water run-off; a wetland was constructed to absorb the toxins and filter the sediment. At the end of this gentle process, the cleansed water flows into Bronx River.
Ukeles also set a precedent for the role of art in changing public attitudes. A major component of Ball’s project involved activating community members, developing an appreciation for plants and microbes – water’s unacknowledged maintenance workers; and providing information about systems hydrology. Ball made a special effort to reach out to local youth who mirrored the nurturing role performed by the plants and microbes. These community members not only learned about biotic systems, they installed and maintain the system’s 8,000 plants. Furthermore, they share what they learned regarding the essentials for sustaining vital ecosystems by giving educational tours to others.
Aesthetics factors prominently into this remediation project. The wetlands replace an unsightly lot behind a warehouse. The viewing platform perched beside this verdant oasis is not merely a welcome refuge in a cluttered urban setting.The platform informs people about environmental blight, encourages them to contribute to clean-up and prevention, and generates respect for the functional contribution being made by this lovely visual experience – a product of sunshine, activating the chemistry of microbes that neutralize toxins and filter sediment.
In sum, instead of using water to wash a dirty object, this artwork washes dirty water so that it can, once again, conduct its primeval job of serving the hydrating functions that are essential for all forms of life.