Скачать или смотреть Ghost Rivers in Baltimore

Long before Baltimore existed as we know it, Sumwalt Run flowed beneath an open sky toward what is now the Inner Harbor.

Today, Sumwalt Run is buried and contained within subterranean stormwater pipes.

“The primary reason why most of these streams were put underground was for development, and it’s still happening,” said Bruce Willen, the interdisciplinary artist behind the public art installation Ghost Rivers. “Cities around the country and around the world are still burying waterways so they can build houses and roads on top of them. It’s not something that just happened 100 years ago.”

From Wyman Park Dell to the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, a squiggly blue line made from thermo-plastic, the same material as bike lane stripes, traces the now-underground stream across roads and sidewalks.

Cars, bikes and feet pass over the art piece, which Willen hopes reminds people of what lies beneath the asphalt.

A musician and former graphic designer, Willen likes doing work that makes people “engage with the places around them in different or unexpected ways.” He often imagines what Baltimore looked like 150 years ago — before the city modeled its (at the time) state-of-the-art sewer system after that of Paris, before the flow of the Jones Falls was replaced with the flow (and gridlock) of an interstate highway. Baltimore’s buried waterways have inspired him to see lost ecology when looking at the landscape around him.

“I would love if it [the art installation] does a little bit of that for other people, if they’re also able to start to see and engage with their own neighborhood or this neighborhood in a different way,” Willen said.

Reporting by Daniel Zawodny.
Video by Krishna Sharma.

#ghostrivers #baltimore #baltimorecity #maryland

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