Mikael Levin
GOWANUS BROADSIDE
(2014)
Black and white video. 90 minutes.
Original soundtrack by Jean-Philippe Antoine Justgottaletthisthing
The Gowanus Canal is a nearly 2 mile long waterway extending from the Bay of New York into the south of Brooklyn. Dug out from tidal marshlands during the heyday of industrialization, the canal became the principle cargo port of the borough, and then quickly became one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States.
When Mikael Levin moved to Gowanus in 2010, the canal had just been designated a Superfund site.
Surrounded by old warehouses, disused industrial sites, and vacant land, this vestige of a center of economic activity, in which nature is now reinserting itself, is a landscape that interrogates the concept and expression of Place. GOWANUS BROADSIDE follows the marginal spaces bordering the length of the canal, recording the spatial and sonorous qualities of this waterway’s cut into the urban space. A doubled movement of rotation and progression brings forward attributes of contingency, temporality, and indexicality central to cinematic expression of place.
GOWANUS BROADSIDE is presented now at Powerhouse Arts overlooking the canal.