Watershed Water School

 Watershed Water School was a speculation on learning as something occurring between all species all the time, as an exchange. This learning needs long durations and is done through association. This 2 day long “autonomous school” was open to all living nearby or inside the Menominee River- an area I sought to highlight as a physical catchment basin. This part of the river is also contained within an area that has a political designation, called Milwaukee Wisconsin.  The project sought to point out the artificial nature of political boundaries and the destructive nature of capitalism in the environs of a river that is being restored after being used for two centuries as fundamentally an industrial toilet for the hide tanning industry of a previous century. 

The Water School was a daylong observation of the river’s plants, current, and inhabitants to which the public was invited. In the years preceding this 2010 intervention, the flood walls of the Menominee River had been removed and 160 native plant species were introduced; the river is slowly beginning to resemble its pre-industrial self. Activities included mapping, applied physics, taking samples, crayfish meditation, poetry reading, and a conversation about river restoration with restoration horticulturalist Nancy Aten.

Project from Watershed: Art, Activism, and Community Engagement (July 2010 Interventions, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, organized by Nicolas Lampert and Raoul Deal) Filmed and Directed by Laura Klein