Paper short abstract:

This artist/anthropologist partnership attends to silent signs that surround us. As coastal dwellers, we are face to face with dramatic ecological degradation; in pursuing this cross disciplinary project, we discover different modes of being together. How might listening to wrack change us?

Paper long abstract:

Wrack, assemblages of grasses, algae, and invertebrates, serve as the primary source of nutrients to beach communities. Wrack floats atop tidal waters, indexing water characteristics, currents, and typologies of debris. Wrack also marks the highwater line, as well as the edge of public beaches in the state of Georgia. As such, wrack is an edge condition, as well as the moving boundary of the commons. Thus the oft overlooked wrack is omnipresent but ephemeral, never looking the same way twice, but always pointing out the conditions. As such, wrack is the voice of the undercommons. Artwork driven by a close study of wrack along the intercoastal waterway as it moves through the American south attends to this voice, shaped as it is by policy, community activisms, property rights, migration patterns, trash, weather and other facets of the hyperobject we call neoliberalism. In this case, a fibers artist and an anthropologist collaborate with the wrack in a series of call and response drawings and writings. This project, taking place over a three month period, will produce a visual exhibit to illustrate and invite stakeholders to attend to the signs that surround us. As coastal dwellers, we are in a state of red alert in terms of ecological degradation; in pursuing this cross disciplinary project, we hope to discover and share with others, a different mode of being together. Wrack, Spanish moss, fire ants, resurrection ferns…these communities are entangled with us in all the ways….how might radical acceptance and embrace change us?