The asphalt layer of the road rippled and cracked revealing a sinkhole. When heavy rains from a storm the days prior washed through the broken stormwater inlet, they took with them the sacul gravelly fine sandy loam that had already begun to vacate the cavity. Human-induced sinkholes pose a threat to the city economy and must be closed up as quickly as possible. This glitch hardly registers on the urban landscape after the corrections are complete.
Tracing Landscape Dismemberment Through Time
Cross Sections of New Orleans 1600-2023
Water soluble graphite and watercolor on archival paper
2024
Cross Sections of New Orleans 1600 – 2023 traces the dismemberment of what was once a vibrant cypress swamp over time. The counter-mapping offers a crucial view that is impossible to see while moving through the city—holding the location of the sinkhole site in while stepping back in time 400 years and reaching out across the landscape to find the location of free-moving water. By visualizing the subterranean layers from the pre-colonial landscape to the present day, the cross sections reveal the chronic slow violence enacted by the city’s drainage infrastructure.
- Traces the process of asset alienation completed through the draining and parceling of boggy land for development from the colonial period forward.
- Highlights the moment the sinkhole created a noticeable rupture in the urban fabric, allowing past realities like New Basin Canal, to emerge at the site.
- Created using a combination of LiDAR point cloud mapping techniques for contemporary depth and elevation, paired with extensive archival research
