Watershed: Ways of Knowing the River @ Big Marsh Park

The Chicago River holds and weaves together a prism of stories. Wherever you

touch it, you touch layers and layers of history, ecology, culture, and art.

The goal of this project is to gather folks from different communities to

experience the river in this holographic way, as a holder of memory, as a

storyteller.

To do this, we’ll run a series of four experiences this summer—three on

kayaks and one on the shore. Each will take place on a different segment of

the Chicago River. During this time, participants will engage with and learn

from community activists, artists, historians, and ecologists about that

specific site and the narratives it holds. The experiences will be interactive

and will include creating art and engaging in community science. We hope that

participants will build community, share their own stories, and leave with a

richer understanding of the ways the river connects all things.

This program is for ages 14+.

Your Facilitators

Natasha Mijares is an artist, writer, curator, and educator. She received her

MFA in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhib-

ited at various international and national galleries. Her work has appeared in

Gravity of the Thing, Hypertext Review, Calamity, Vinyl Poetry, and more.

Teresa Dzieglewicz is a Pushcart Prize-winning poet, educator, and lover of

rivers and prairies. She is a Black Earth Institute fellow, a Chicago Poetry

Center Poet-in-Residence, and part of the founding team of Mni Wichoni Naki-

cizin Wounspe (Defenders of the Water School). Her first book of poetry,

Something Small of How to See a River, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press and

her first children’s book, Belonging (co-written with Kimimila Locke), is

forthcoming from Chronicle Books.

Norman Long

Norman W. Long’s multi-disciplinary practice involves walking, listening, teaching, improvising, performing, recording, and composing to create environments and situations in which he and the audience are engaged in dialogues about memory, place, ecology, race, culture, value, silence, and the invisible. Norman’s practice has been influenced by the emerging practices and thinking of 1970s artists, musicians, critics, and designers regarding landscape and sound- specifically Rosalind Krauss’ article “Sculpture in the Expanded Field”, and the development of the acoustic ecology by R. Murray Schafer. The sounds found in his work has its inspirational roots in the Black music of house and techno, so-called ‘free jazz’, Great Black Music, Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi, Pauline Oliveros, King Tubby, Dub, and the sounds of artists outside and in-between genres. Long’s improvisational and compositional strategies are inspired by Samuel R. Delany’s palimpsest text “Plague Journal '' chapter of Dhalgren (Science Fiction) and Atlantis: Three tales (Fiction) and Mark Bradford’s survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art: Chicago in 2011 featuring Bradford’s process of collecting and collaging, scraping and pasting materials sourced from his community in Los Angeles.

He holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in New Genres (2001) and a master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University (2008). Norman Long has performed and exhibited at Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery, Experimental Sound Studio, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Yale University’s Center for Collaborative Arts & Media, The Renaissance Society, 2022 High Zero Festival in Baltimore, MD, Chicago Humanities Festival, Chicago Cultural Center, and 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Norman is a current artist in residence at Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center. Norman has also attended residencies at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, EMS in Stockholm, the Djerassi Foundation, and the Yucca Valley Material Lab in California, as well as AS220 in Providence, RI. Norman has also received a ThreeWalls RaDLab fellowship and commission for his pieces, Neighborhood Listening Garden and Re-Membering/Re-Presencing. Norman has performed and toured with Angel Bat Dawid and the Brothahood, and has also performed and recorded with the Ali/Harris/Long/McKenna group, Spectralina, Brochure, Todd Carter, John Daniel, Xris Espinoza, Carol Genetti, Damon Locks, Tatsuya Nakatani, Joe Namy, Cristal Sabbagh, and Sara Zalek. He has released his compositions on Hausu Mountain, Reserve Matinee, LINE, Rural Situationis, and Room40 labels. Calumet in Dub, his soundtrack to his installation exhibited at the Glass Curtain Gallery in Chicago, is his latest solo release on Blorpus Editions.

In 2023, Norman presented Calumet in Dub, an exhibition of his research-based work delving into ecology and soundscapes of the Southeast Side of Chicago along the Calumet and Little Calumet River area. Inspired initially by a story that aired on the BBC about the relationship of the Little Calumet River to the history of the Great Migration, Long has investigated how housing, labor, and environmental activism has coalesced in this location and how historic figure, Hazel Johnson (considered the “mother of the environmental justice movement”) diligently brought these issues to light.

The project has received initial funding from Black Earth Institute. This project is affiliated with Midwest Society of Acoustic Ecology.

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