to be with the shore is all we ask

Haenggi’s ongoing 10-year project begins not with what we, as humans, desire, but with “what is here.” It asks how we can avoid prioritizing destruction, such as hardening the shoreline, further harming shoreline ecosystems, and reclaiming land from the sea. Instead, it advocates for initially engaging with multispecies communities—comprising both humans and non-human inhabitants of the shores—as a means to decolonize perspectives and seek social and environmental justice. Rather than viewing the waterfront, shoreline, and intertidal zone solely as threats for flooding and destruction, the project encourages seeing them as spaces of transformation where the rhythmic ebb and flow of tides is ongoing relation and communication with the land and the sea.

andrea haenggi’s 10-year ongoing project in co-creation with the terrestrial and aquatic plants called “to be with the shore is all we ask” started in 2021 in response to the New York City’s 10 year long Comprehensive Waterfront Plan of the transformation of the shoreline, through an invitation by the arts organization Works on Water. The New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan outlines numerous commitments aimed at enhancing the well-being of the waterfront. These commitments are framed with a focus on future desires and are predominantly written from a human-centered perspective.

2024 Forgotten Tidal Mudflats

UPCOMING

Solo Exhibition
Paul Robeson Campus Gallery, Newark, NJ
Nov. 21, 2024 – April 7, 2025

2023 bladderwrack (to be with the shore is all we ask)

Part of the Multimedia Exhibition *This Is Not A Drill*
NYU’s Bobst Library, New York City
Sept. 20-Dec.1 2023

Interactive Website, LED Screen, Wall Map, bladderwrack, stones, salt, annotated CWP-book, Interactive Website Programming by Dan Phiffer

bladderwrack, a fluid outpost of the intertidal zone of Lenapehoking (New York and New Jersey), is an embodied, research-based, and digital participatory platform. It was created by andrea haenggi in collaboration with the indigenous seaweed bladderwrack and was hosted both in NYU’s Bobst Library and is still ongoing present at tobewiththeshoreisallweask.care/bladderwrack.