PLACES WITH A FUTURE 2004: WATER TABLE

Spoleto Festival USA announces the site-specific installation Water Table, conceived by the multidisciplinary team of writer Kendra Hamilton, designer Walter Hood, multimedia artist Ernesto Pujol and visual artist Frances Whitehead.  This distinguished group of arts professionals was brought together by curator Mary Jane Jacob to collaborate on a public reflection on the Memminger Auditorium area—its history over time and its connection to similar sites of change. Each team member has roots in the South and a profound investment in the past histories and possible futures evoked by the places they inhabit. Water Table is the first in a series of “Places with a Future” projects as part of Spoleto Festival USA’s ongoing “Evoking History” program.         

Water Table takes the form of a huge raised platform. An "open greenhouse" in the grid format of a rice paddy, it is also a living sculpture comprised of over 3000 Carolina Gold Rice plants in round plastic ponds set atop a platform that nearly fills this asphalt courtyard.  On the one hand Water Table suggests a grand-scale experimental laboratory while, on the other, its human-scale intimacy (it rises to about kitchen-table height) signals us to gather at a table which is large enough to be a meeting place for community dialogue.  This site-specific installation has been created for the courtyard of Memminger Elementary School, which is adjacent to Memminger Auditorium.

While researching the history of the area, the team discovered that where the Memminger Auditorium now stands was once a creek surrounded by marshland outside the walled city of Charlestowne. Recalling former rice plantations, Water Table also projects us into the future with thoughts of wetland preservation and of finding the right the balance of water and land that continuously redefines the Low Country.

Water Table reflects a conviction that the history of small places is one of dependence: people and the land, water and rice, and the need for understanding of the interdependence with the land and water. This site-specific but globally minded work seeks to create a forum for a discussion of future alternatives. 

A mural-size map will be installed on the east side of Memminger Auditorium, facing the courtyard and Water Table.  Based on satellite images of the waterways and wetlands of the peninsular region, the map allows visitors to visualize the regional places where the dynamics of human and natural ecologies are being played out today. Indeed these pressing issues will find a forum at Water Table:  on several evenings the map will become a late-night projection screen for still photographs and film footage, setting the scene for reflections on regional change.  A banner-size map, located at street level, near the entrance to Water Table offers a chronological series of historical mappings of the area starting before European presence in the region. 

Another interactive exercise in “mapping” will occur as spontaneous ad-hoc installations of blue chairs mark boundaries, appearing and reappearing throughout the city as an invitation to pedestrians, neighbors and other stakeholders to come sit and talk with the artists about their thoughts and concerns for the future.

The Artists
Kendra Hamilton:
“Too often examinations of the past have been about justifying the present. Water Table invites us to look at the past, squarely and honestly, and imagine a better future.”
Kendra Hamilton is City Councilor-Elect, City of Charlottesville, Virginia, and Assistant Editor, Black Issues in Higher Education.
Walter Hood:
“The Water Table suggests a specific relationship between the people of Charleston and the landscape that they inhabit.  The city's history and future is bound to the wetland and sea coast that permeates below its ground surface.  The built landscape in all of its machinations bear testament to the many cultural groups that have exploited, worshipped and embraced the power of water.” Walter Hood, is a designer and the founder and principal of Oakland-based Hood Design, a practice involving a wide variety of public and private projects, and is on the faculty in the department of Landscape Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.
Ernesto Pujol:
“Physically, Water Table is the kind of temporary public art that serves as the crossroads between ecology, culture, education, and sustainable community development, eliciting the best of people.” Ernesto Pujol is a multimedia artist and Adjunct Professor, Pratt Institute, New York.
Frances Whitehead:
 “Water Table conflates the geologic and the domestic.  It ties each of us in our daily lives to the invisible undercurrents of the region and alludes to the inescapable reality that human culture depends, always, on the resources that the land affords. In the Lowcountry this means the wetlands, the delta confluence of rivers, and the simple but profound fact that the land, the water, and the culture are one.” Frances Whitehead is a sculptor and Professor, Sculpture Department, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

A Note from the Curator, Mary Jane Jacob
Evoking History is a program about place…this place.  It started even before it had this name: in 1991 with the peninsula-wide, site-specific exhibition “Places with a Past.”  It continued in 1997 with a regional approach resulting in projects for “Art and Landscape.”  It shifted in 2001, going deeper, taking a longer and more complex view, more invested in a process of dialogue among individuals with long family histories and newer residents who all had a stake in the past and future of this place.   This community of individuals is our stakeholders.   And intrinsic to all the artworks engendered are the Evoking History discussions…about art, about history, about society…about land, about water….

Thanks to the continued interest and support of the "Evoking History" Steering Committee: Karen Chandler, Director, Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture; Michael Maher, Director, Civic Design Center; George McDaniel, Director, Drayton Hall, a National Trust historic site; Madeleine McGee, President, Community Foundation Serving Coastal South Carolina; and Nigel Redden, General Director, Spoleto Festival USA. 

Sponsors/Credits
Support for Evoking History 2004 has been provided by The Rockefeller Foundation and the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation.

Water Table and its programs have been realized in collaboration with:

  • Memminger Elementary School, Ann Oplinger, Principal
  • Landscape Preservation Studio, Program in Historic Preservation and Community Planning, College of Charleston, James Ward, Adjunct Instructor
  • Geographic Information Systems Laboratory, College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine, Tora Johnson, Visiting Faculty/Curriculum Consultant
  • Lowcountry Earth Force, Kirk Anne Taylor, Program Director
  • The Graduate Center in Historic Preservation, Clemson University, Charleston, Dr. Jeffrey Burden, Director
  • Clemson Architecture Center—Charleston, Robert Miller, Director
  • Wings for Kids, Theron Snype, President of the Board; Ginny Deerin, Founder and Executive Director; Bridget Laird, Assistant Director; and Virgil Smith III, Program Director, Memminger summer camp
  • Coastal Research and Education Center/U.S. Vegetable Laboratory, Dr. Merle Shepard, Director, and Hal Hanvey, Farm Manager
  • Carolina Gold Rice Foundation
  • and Glenn Roberts, Anson Mills, Columbia; Alfred and Joanne Jones, Charleston; Pete Madsen, Pete’s Herbs, James Island; Cross Garden Center; Earth Fare; Three Oaks Contractors, Inc.; Charleston Horticultural Society; and Charleston's Master Gardeners