RIVERS AND POWER

I am pleased to say that we will be joined in Chicago next week by scholar of the River Jordan & freshwater activist Rachel Havrelock and anti-colonial theorist of landscape Dilip da Cunha to break down the relations between water and power. This is the opening event of a binational symposium toward which I have been working for the past two years, and which will re-convene in Paris in mid-June. Please join us live or by livestream. The following day will be an intimate gathering of artists, scientists, activists, and scholars of water on a 40-person vessel floating down the channel known here as the Chicago River, experiencing three generative workshops in listening, experimental documentary, and performing infrastructure, followed by a discussion and closing performance featuring sound artist Norman W. Long and poet/performer extraordinaire julie ezelle patton at the Maritime Museum. If you're dying to know more, ask me and I will let you know in a backchannel modality.

Rivers & Power: A Conversation on the Imaginaries, Materiality, and Culture of Urban Waters

Thursday, October 17, 2024, 6:00pm

Franke Institute for the Humanities, 1100 E. 57th St.

University of Chicago

Dilip da Cunha (Columbia University)

Rachel Havrelock (University of Illinois Chicago)

Becky Lyons (Friends of the Chicago River), Welcome Remarks

Jennifer Scappettone (The University of Chicago), Introduction

Aaron Jakes (The University of Chicago), Moderator

The relationship of water to power has taken shape across plural scales of space and time, governing how cities and their extensions as “landscape” have been designed, constructed, represented, and operated over the millennia. These keynotes will open up a dialogue surrounding the dynamic of water and power; they will serve to open a binational symposium addressing challenges facing urban watersheds across the globe in a time of climate change and the diminishing effectiveness of regulatory apparatuses—when urban riversheds, long treated as waste sinks and logistics systems, are being sporadically reclaimed for wildlife and recreation, but also as scenographic instruments of gentrification and narrative control. The conversation between da Cunha and Havrelock will foreground the role of wetness as a vital agent within urbanized territory, challenging the production of the “river” as an ideological instrument, and the extractivist and colonial perspective that has governed the manipulation of water in the modern age.

Co-sponsored by CEGU, the International Institute of Research in Paris, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, CNRS/IRL HumanitiesPlus, and the Department of English.