2022 Call for Ecotopian Toolmakers
Call for 2022 Ecotopian Toolmakers for Delaware Watershed Justice
Image credits: Paul Saint-Amour; U.S.Geological Survey; Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash
In cooperation with the Independence Seaport Museum, the Penn Program for Environmental Humanities invites you to participate in a project to create Ecotopian Tools for water justice in the Delaware River watershed. Successful proposals for Ecotopian Tools will be explored in designer-led public workshops at the museum and will feature in the companion exhibit and catalog.
The river runs 330 miles through the traditional homelands of the Lenape people, called the Delaware by English settler colonists. Its multi-species communities have undergone many dramatic changes, many driven by humans, and its current inhabitants face increasing climate risks, including flooding and toxicity. Today, the river provides drinking water for some fifteen million humans, and the basin offers habitat to 400 types of birds; 90 fish species; macro- and microinvertebrates; iconic native species, including shad; and invasives, such as snakeheads.
The river is tidal as far up as Trenton, and it rises and falls six feet twice daily (ten at Trenton). The Delaware River port complex–spanning Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania–is one of the largest shipping areas in the United States and the largest freshwater port in the world, moving vast quantities of petroleum and petrochemical products and more. A recently concluded project to deepen the 103-mile main shipping channel resulted in a considerable expansion to the capacity of the Port of Philadelphia (or PhilaPort). Climate impacts the river and its ten sub-watersheds in a variety of ways. As the region gets hotter and wetter, extreme weather can overwhelm infrastructure built for a bygone climate regime; more severe storms bring larger surges; and sea level rise is already being felt in the river’s tidal section.
Proposals will introduce “ecotopian” tools, whether conceptual or realized, that might be used by inhabitants of the watershed to support its diverse, multi-species community as we learn to adapt and respond to our changing local environment: sinking, submerging, immersing, diving, soaking in climate-changing waters. Inspired by utopian writing and projects across cultures, traditions, and times, the word “ecotopian” is borrowed from Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 novel, Ecotopia. An Ecotopian Tool for Water Justice should spark awareness to apprehend and address the multiplying effects of climate change on the basin’s diverse communities. Previous Ecotopian Tools have included guided tours, workshops, community-built floating sculptures, community science initiatives, data visualizations, and more.
Successful proposals will be selected by a jury of eight interdisciplinary and community experts–Alexis Cabrera (Youth Programs Supervisor, Independence Seaport Museum); Kate Farquhar (Landscape Architect); Terrill Haigler (Ya Fav Trashman); Stacy Levy (Artist); Joshua Moses (Associate Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies; Visual Culture, Arts, and Media Faculty Fellow (2020-2022), Haverford College); Howard Neukrug (Professor of Professional Practice, Earth and Environmental Science and Director, The Water Center at Penn, University of Pennsylvania); Maya K. van Rossum (Environmentalist and Delaware Riverkeeper); and Zay (River Ambassador, Independence Seaport Museum); chaired by Bethany Wiggin (Founding Director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, an Associate Professor of German and member of the Graduate Groups in Comparative Literature and English, University of Pennsylvania).
Each Toolmaker will be awarded micro-grants of $1000 to allow for the proposed Ecotopian Tool to be explored, prototyped, and possibly built, distributed, and used in the watershed and on the River. Throughout late spring and early summer 2022, Toolmakers will work with the ISM and PPEH to lead a series of participatory public workshops featuring their Tool and its applications. Research proposals and outcomes will feature in the Museum’s community gallery; a fall 2022 workshop at the University of Pennsylvania will result in the creation of a print Catalog for Ecotopian Tools and a companion digital exhibit.
2022 Ecotopian Toolkit Project in Partnership with Independence Seaport Museum
Tool making is a signature trait of the human species. What tools can we make, and might we require, in the age of the human, the anthropocene: a name for the present geological epoch when humans are the most potent force shaping earth’s systems? Global warming and other anthropocene challenges, including the ongoing sixth mass extinction event, often lead to apocalyptic visions, or apathy. Through the Ecotopian Toolkit initiative, we explore a longer history of the anthropocene to help represent—and respond to—our contemporary moment. Might a utopian approach to the problem of global warming help us navigate warmer, rising waters and build forms of refuge? What tools can STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) educators in universities, museums, and nonprofits design and develop via the history of utopia and its hope for better futures?
In 2017, PPEH hosted our first design competition and a series of workshops to build ecotopian tools for WetLand, the art boat-meets-science lab conceived by then-PPEH Artist-in-Residence Mary Mattingly, in cooperation with Bartram’s Garden. In 2018 we partnered with Bartram’s Garden and ran a design competition inviting proposals for tools designed with the Schuylkill River at Bartram’s in mind, and in 2019 we worked with the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum to do much the same. Each year “toolmakers” were selected from the pool of applicants, provided a stipend by PPEH to realize their design proposal (or a prototype), and asked to offer a public workshop about the tool. Workshops ranged from community build sessions to construct Jacob Rivkin and Eric Blasco’s floating bio-remediating water filter and bird habitat, to more traditional lectures like Deirdre Murphy’s discussion of her process of creating prints from historic and current migratory data. Other toolmakers offered book-writing and design workshops for children, guided trash walks, multi-species movement and listening studios, and more.
Now in 2021, PPEH is supporting the creation of another cohort of human toolmakers who will retain an engagement with floating on/sinking in/and otherwise living with urban waters; and will similarly explore what it might mean to face contemporary ecological challenges with critically attuned and creatively oriented tools. In partnership with the Independence Seaport Museum (ISM), we will turn our focus to the Delaware River and to water justice. Each artist/team’s project will be highlighted in a public demonstration led by the artist/team, documented on the PPEH and Schuylkill Corps websites, and archived and included in ongoing Toolkit initiatives.
Jacob Rivkin and Eric Blasso, Bio Pool
Community build of Jacob Rivkin and Eric Blasso’s Bio Pool