Flushing River Canoe Tour
A public canoe trip up the Flushing River realized in conjunction with Lara Almarcegui’s project “Guide to the Wastelands of Flushing River.”
In conjunction with Lara Almarcegui’s project “Guide to the Wastelands of Flushing River” on view at Ludlow 38 in May 2010, the Urban Landscape Lab, Ludlow 38 and the Long Island City Community Boathouse invited the public on a canoe tour of the Flushing River. The event was free and open to all. On Saturday May 15, about 50 participants met at the Flushing Marina Bay Promenade, and paddled past the U-Haul storage facility, a wetlands restoration area run by the Port Authority of NY & NJ, and into the former “Valley of the Ashes,” and World’s Fair grounds. Everyone stayed above water except for one person’s car keys, which were retrieved later at low tide.
About Lara Almarcegui’s Guide to the Wastelands of Flushing River:
The publication Guide to the Wastelands of Flushing River contains photographs from 12 sites in Queens accompanied by concise descriptions that outline the locations’ history, present state and future. Visitors are invited to pick up a copy and explore these sites at their own leisure. A slide installation at the Ludlow 38 gallery on the Lower East Side presents a selection of photographs taken during Almarcegui’s excursions along Flushing River, from its original source via Willow Lake and Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the site for the 1939 and the 1964 World’s Fairs, to its estuary at Flushing Bay.
Lara Almarcegui was born in Zaragoza, Spain, in 1972 and lives in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She has exhibited widely, at the Liverpool Biennial in 2004, the São Paulo Biennial in 2006, the Gwangju and Taipei Biennials in 2008, and the Ramallah and Athens Biennials in 2009, to name a few. Recent solo exhibitions include Ruins in the Netherlands at Ellen de Bruijne Gallery, Amsterdam and Pepe Cobo, Madrid, as well as Bilbao Wastelands at Sala Rekalde in Bilbao, all in 2008.
Thank you:
Long Island City Community Boat House: Erik Baard, Ted Gruber, Larissa Harris, Laura Segal, Paul Baker, Robert DiMaio, Monica Schroeder.
MINI, Friends of Goethe
Ludlow 38: Helga Christoffersen