Project by Chris Smith, Bin Tang
“In October 2014, in a conversation at the University of Aarhus, participants coined the term “Plantationocene” to describe the transformation of human-managed farms, pastures, and forests into extractive, enclosed plantations relying on slave labor and other exploited, alienated, and often spatially displaced labor.” —Dona Haraway, Environmental Humanities, vol. 6, 2015
Our project is described in two primary arguments. First, through extensive research our project forms an understanding of the Hudson River via a deeply evaluated history where the boundaries that define the river’s extent expand further than its banks. Through a series of five localized acts, the Hudson River is revealed to be enmeshed in a series of myths that have allowed for its watershed, timbershed, and history to be objectified, extracted and erased. In a phrase: the Hudson River became a stage upon which the Plantationocene was realized. Colonial mythology allowed and promoted ideas of the endless supply of these natural resources. It was the myth that allowed for the Hudson to be polluted and kept dirty because of a massive infrastructure of pipes, aqueducts, reservoirs allowing for an ever expanding population of New York City. These aquatic ghosts of the Hudson River are built into our project and revealed in a series of allegorical scenographies that allow for a deeper and more complex reading of how strangely looped and enmeshed the ecology of the Hudson River is presently displayed in NYC.
Second, our project reconstitutes the innate rights of the Hudson River directly, and looks to subvert these very myths placed on it by a constructing rehearsals of alternative fluvial futures. These alternatives are linked to the five acts of research and are presented as follows in a five act play:
INTRODUCTION TO ACT I: THE STREAMS BENEATH US. Before aqueducts and reservoirs, Manhattan (Manahatta) drank from a freshwater body just north of City Hall: Collect Pond. It was sacred to the Lenape and critical to the growing city—until waste and tanneries poisoned it. In its place: a jail, a courthouse, and an engineered grid. But water resists burial. As the city expanded, so did its need for imported water—first through the Croton Distributing Reservoir at 42nd Street, and eventually into Central Park’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, which was decommissioned in 1993. In this act, we return to the marshes and streams under Center and Leonard Streets—not to mourn malfunction, but to daylight what the city has buried. This act reconstitutes the river by granting it the right to be restored—physically, ecologically, and spiritually—into the life of the city.
INTRODUCTION TO ACT II: THE POOL BENEATH THE DAM. Completed in 1906, the New Croton Dam was an act of monumental engineering—and monumental displacement. Farmlands flooded. Villages erased. All in service of supplying New York City with clean, gravity-fed water. The dam still holds, but its purpose—pure extraction—now fractures. This act asks: what happens when a dam, instead of withholding, releases joy? This act grants the river the right to flow—selectively, joyfully, ceremonially—free from the static logic of total control.
INTRODUCTION TO ACT III: THE CITY AS FOUNTAIN. The Catskills Aqueduct, completed in 1915, carries clean mountain water to New York City. For over a century, this hidden network has run beneath streets and sidewalks—often unrecognized, always vital. But what if it did more than serve silently? What if it celebrated? In this act, the River Tribunal envisions a repurposing: the fire hydrant, historically a tool for emergencies, becomes a ritual of joy. Every ten feet, a hydrant becomes a fountain. A field of fountains. The park becomes a collective shower. This act grants the river the right to flow—not just in pipes or tunnels, but in public, as joy, as relief, as civic delight.
INTRODUCTION TO ACT IV: THE FOREST REMEMBERS. Before timber was an industry, it was an ecology. Before sawmills, there were beavers. The Hudson Valley’s first major extractive economy was fur—and beavers were its keystone. The “Beaver Wars” of the 17th century saw European colonies and Indigenous nations fighting over pelts and waterways, transforming the region’s hydrology. By the 1800s, fur gave way to timber. Logging intensified near Poughkeepsie and beyond until the Catskills were nearly clear-cut. In response, both the Adirondack Forest Preserve (1885) and a push to restore beaver populations took hold. This act grants the river the right to maintain its biodiversity, honoring not only trees, but the full multispecies ecosystem—especially the beaver—that once stabilized its banks and might again. This is not nostalgia. It is a radical reweaving of ecological memory.
INTRODUCTION TO ACT V: THE CANAL ASCENDS. The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, was both marvel and machine. Linking the Hudson to the Great Lakes, it advanced a new kind of inland empire—made possible by Irish labor, engineering, and locks. In Lockport, water ascended in five steps. What once lifted barrels of wheat now lifts nothing. This act grants the river the right to perform its functions within its ecosystem—not as an extractive utility, but as a site of ecological ceremony. What rises here is not cargo, but collective transformation.
