Layring Community on the Wynantskill
November 12th, 2021
Robert Dalton Harris, Diane Deblois, Celia Kutz, Agnes & John Ojdana, Che Perez, Natasha Holmes
A short video, “Layering Community on the Wynantskill,” introduces a project initiated by the question “How Will We Live Together?” Actions and workshops over the last months have explored local layers of geology, geography, and history of both structures and people, with engagement from the community at several levels. Photographers, painters, musicians, interviewers have interacted with neighbors who responded to community press announcements. A first workshop followed the Wynantskill creek from its rise in Glass Lake, using a jigsaw puzzle of Joseph Hidley’s 1866 painting and historic maps, to where it joins the Hudson River in Troy. Team members showed video footage of kayaking the upper levels of the stream, and results of a train marking exploration. A second workshop focused on historic images of local buildings to identify what has survived. In preparation for the third workshop, team members interviewed surviving mill workers, providing names to search for in the Sand Lake Union Cemetery. Participants placed flowers on the graves and photographed them. In conversation, discover what is imagined for this project going forward, in the watershed of the Wynantskill, a stream that powered the mills that have housed Arts Letters & Numbers for the last decade. And what might be imagined for such a project seeking non-political engagement in other communities.