August 24 - September 15, 2024
From the Galveston Artist Residency:
“IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT by Fred Schmidt-Arenales is a three channel video installation, on view in the GAR main gallery space.
This exhibition focuses on a proposed $57 billion water development infrastructure project called the Texas Coastal Barrier Project, colloquially known as the Ike Dike. Expanding upon the existing Galveston Seawall, the Ike Dike is framed as a means of protection from hurricane-induced storm surge flooding in Galveston Bay and along the petrochemical corridor in the Houston ship channel. When completed, it will include a greater than 2 mile long ocean barrier that, when closed, will plug the entrance to Galveston Bay.
Employing documentary and narrative filmmaking strategies, this three channel video installation explores the symbolic and unconscious projections underpinning the Ike Dike. The scenes toggle between recordings of actual bureaucratic proceedings and open-ended imaginary scenarios in which avatars representing state actors engage in decidedly non-bureaucratic actions. By untangling the governmental interests driving this project, the work offers viewers a field for imagining how they might intervene in such opaque processes. IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT contemplates human attempts to engineer nature into submission under the guise of resiliency, and at the cost of huge ecological detriment.
This work is being developed into a feature length film following the exhibition. IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT originated at Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, NY, as part of Swamplands, a yearlong research project that focused on the ethical and technical entanglements of water. It was organized by the Storefront team with lead curator Jessica Kwok.
Fred Schmidt-Arenales is an artist and filmmaker. His projects attempt to bring awareness to unconscious processes on the individual and group level. He has presented films, installations, and performances internationally at venues including SculptureCenter and Abrons Arts Center, (New York), Links Hall (Chicago), The Darling Foundry (Montreal), LightBox and The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Artspace (New Haven), The Museum of Fine Arts and FotoFest (Houston), Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst und Medien (Graz), and Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna). His recent film Committee of Six is an official selection of the 2022-23 Architecture and Design Film Festival and was awarded a jury prize for best film at the 2023 Onion City Experimental Film Festival”
Reception: August 24, 2024 | 6–9 pm
2521 Mechanic St
Galveston, 77550 TX
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