Floodlines

What happens when waters rise, and how do cities heal? Floodlines asked the question inside the brick walls Hurricane Sandy once filled: Pioneer Works' main hall in Red Hook, at the edge of the water.

Co-presented with Wellcome Trust as a marquee event of Climate Week NYC, the evening wove music, poetry, science, and conversation. Writer Hanif Abdurraqib hosted. Hurray for the Riff Raff played, and Eileen Myles read with Steve Gunn on guitar. Paola Antonelli of MoMA led a conversation with landscape architect Pippa Brashear, environmental epidemiologist Robbie Parks, urban planner Daphne Lundi, and community organizer Karen Dawn Blondel, alongside filmmaker Edward Buckles Jr., on whose bodies bear the floods, and what urban health looks like in an age of extreme heat, heavier rains, and rising seas.

As one of the program producers, I helped build the evening with Wellcome, from the conversation on stage to the garden beyond it. There, FloodNet NYC, Genspace, Urban Ocean Lab, Resilient Red Hook, and others invited more than 900 attendees to meet the science of a changing shoreline firsthand. OceanX Education art residents filled the space with installations, and Madame Gandhi carried the night out on a DJ set.