Project by Claire Anne Galla
For this work, I began with a question of the ways that water’s properties provide it with inherent degrees of self-governance. This led me to consider when that is truly the case, where water moves freely in an autonomous form. I draw out this tension through an engagement with a highly structured form of water mediation, movement, containment and release through the object and behaviors of storm grates. Looking to the storm grate as a spatial, infrastructural and functional object, I was drawn to its role as an elemental medium, a window into subterranean processes that are acted on by the water and remnants that move through the grate, all of which create a response system down below. I attempted to capture a moment of spatial collapse through constructing an action and reaction vertical view port that’s mirroring qualities provide ephemeral moments of seeing in and through the grate.
