The Beginning of Swimming Season at the End of the World

A participatory archival activation about swimming, flooding, and water relationships created for the 2024 Culture Push symposium. Visit the archive in the archive on June 14th or 15th during open hours. Learn about water experiences and practices, urban swimming, and coastal ecology. Share your own water stories, feelings, fears, and memories.

The Beginning of Swimming Season at the End of the World is part of a research and public art project about swimming, flooding, and water relationships called Open Water created by Nora Almeida in collaboration with other artists and the public. So far the project has been conducted on the coast of Red Hook and shores of Coney Island Creek.

During the symposium, in collaboration with Interference Archive, the Gowanus Dredgers, Faith Toren (climate adaptation specialist, artist), and Jordan Packer (urban ecologist), we will install an interactive archive that will change and expand through the course of the symposium. 

We’ll be recording anonymous oral histories, annotating a non-scientific map of NYC waterways, inviting additions to our incomplete climate action emergency toolkit, and asking questions emerging from research and an ongoing dialogic and somatic exchange with the videographer iki nakagawa.

Also at: Gowanus Dredgers Boathouse, Sunday, June 16th 1-5pm

Nora Almeida is an urban swimmer, writer, conceptual and performance artist, educator, and environmental activist based Gowanus, Brooklyn / Lenapehoking. Her art explores intersections of archiving, environmental investigation, and spatial disruption.