The Water Project: Research and Cultural Production

Along with access to energy, access to potable water is quickly emerging as one of the most pressing and complex issues we face on our globe. At UChicago, scientists and engineers are focused on developing new filtration technologies, novel methods to monitor underground water movement, and innovative smart grids for urban water management, while social scientists and economists are researching policy interventions for water governance. This research across the disciplines, however, proceeds in isolation—and, perhaps, without much consideration for the emergent and powerful role of arts and culture production around water-related issues.

The Arts, Science + Culture Initiative has launched The Water Project: Research and Cultural Production, a University-wide program to amplify the discourse around the pressing concerns of water—locally and globally—by bringing together scientists, humanists, social scientists, curators, students, community members, and professional arts practitioners. Such a program that brings these voices together currently does not exist on our campus. The Water Project will cross disciplinary boundaries to establish an “ecology of perspectives” focused on water.

Expanding on a series of successful faculty roundtables (“Water Tables”) in 2018–19, the Water Project will combine coursework, performances, exhibitions, commissioned artworks, and film screenings that address issues of water as they relate to scientific research, public policy, artistic practice, and humanistic inquiry. The program will invigorate and deepen research and teaching on the topic of water and also provide a forum to address the impact on the local and global health and well-being of humanity and our ecosystems.

2021 Public Programs

October 14, 2021
5-6 pm
A Mobile Musical Performance of “Lead in da Watah,” featuring avery r. young and da deacon board

avery r. young, a writer, performer, educator, composer, producer, visual artist, and activist, wrote "Lead in da Watah" in direct response to the 2014 (and ongoing) water crisis in Flint, Michigan, where lead in the public water system affected 100,000 residences. He references back to the African American spiritual "Wade in The Water," which was created and sung by slaves to convey secret codes to one another as they moved through the Underground Railroad on the road to freedom. Accompanying Young will be musicians from his band, de deacon board (playing three horns and one percussion). This mobile performance intends to highlight the growing local and international crisis of potable water and takes place in conjunction with the city-wide program Current—Chicago Water Week. 

2019–20 Public Programs

January 17, 2020
12:30–1:30 pm
Roundtable: The Study of Water
Classics 110, 1010 E. 59th Street

Join Chicago Studies for an interdisciplinary dialogue about ways of studying water, learn about some of the project's scholars at the University are pursuing in relation to it. Victoria Saramago, Assistant Professor of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies, health policy researcher Prachi Sanghavi, and Sabina Shaikh, Senior Lecturer in Environmental and Urban Studies in the College, come together in this roundtable, part of the Chicago Studies Research Roundtable Series co-hosted with the UChicago Program on the Global Environment. Attendees may bring their own lunch, and fresh-baked cookies, coffee, and tea will be served.

April 2, 2020
6 pm
CANCELED: Film screening and talk by artist Ellie Ga
Logan Center Screening Room, 201
Free and open to the public

The Arts, Science, + Culture Initiative and the Open Practice Committee in the Department of Visual Arts are pleased to welcome artist Ellie Ga, who will present a screening version of her video installation Gyres 1-3. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the artist about her artistic trajectory and working method.

ELLIE GA is a New York-born, Stockholm-based artist whose immersive, wide-ranging investigations include charting of the quotidian in the frozen reaches of the Arctic Ocean and exploring the submerged ruins of the ancient lighthouse of Alexandria. In performances and video installations, Ga’s braided narratives intertwine extensive research with first-hand experiences that often follow uncertain leads and take unexpected turns. Ga is the author of Square Octagon Circle (Siglio Press, New York) and North Was Here (Ugly Duckling Presse). Ga was a recent recipient of a three-year Swedish Research Council artistic research grant. Her work is in the public collections of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo; FRAC Franche-Comté, Besançon; Fondation Galeries Lafayette, Paris; Hannebauer Collection, Berlin; the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Ga is a co-founder of Ugly Duckling Presse in Brooklyn.

April 14, 2020
5–6:30 pm
CANCELED: Innovations in Data Science to Address Global Water Challenges
The Polsky Exchange, Promontory Classroom, 1452 E 53rd St

The water crisis is being realized globally, from shortages in clean drinking water and water for agriculture to threats to water quality from a myriad of sources, including natural disasters and large-scale storm events. The solutions are complicated and require advances in technology, shifts in political organization and economic structures, changes in behavior, and attention to the cultural dimensions of water to address challenges holistically. Innovations in data science and analysis present one opportunity to address water challenges, including the identification of water stressors, real-time monitoring of water use, more precise and immediate water quality testing and forecasting, and provision of critical information to planners and policymakers. Data scientists can translate data into patterns that provide insights, which then can lead to powerful predictive models and actionable insights reducing costs, enabling reuse & recycling, ensuring water for marginalized populations, and allowing for better stewardship of water resources.

The panelists, with vast and diverse experience in addressing water challenges using data, will discuss new tools and methods created from data science applications to put forth advances needed to ensure water access, equity, and justice across the globe.

Panelists include:
Anni Beukes, Fellow, Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, University of Chicago
Hadley Arnold, Founding Co-Director, Arid Lands Institute and diviningLAB
Dr. Sara Rimer, Argonne National Laboratory
Moderator: Dr. Anders Hallsby, Mazarine Ventures

Sponsored by the Program on Global Environment, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Mazarine Ventures, and the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation

May 4, 2020
6 pm
CANCELED: Oscar Tuazon and Dylan Miner
Water Project: Research and Cultural Production
Logan Center Performance Penthouse

We welcome artists Oscar Tuazon and Dylan Miner to the UChicago campus to discuss their shared interest in and collaboration on the issue of water. For EXPO Chicago 2018, the two artists collaborated on a printmaking project that wove together concerns with water, land, and indigenous rights.

2019–20 Courses offered on the topic of Water

Fall
Molecular Science and Engineering of Water
Professor James Skinner and Assistant Professor Chong Liu
Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
This course will cover the properties of the water molecule, hydrogen bonding, clusters, supercritical water, condensed phases, solutions, confined and interfacial water, clathrates, and nucleation. In addition, methods of water purification, water splitting and fuel cells, water in atmospheric and climate science, and water in biology, health, and medicine will be discussed.

Winter
Water: Science, History, Policy, and Futures
Professor Seth Darling
Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
Water is shockingly bizarre in its properties and of unsurpassed importance throughout human history, yet so mundane as to often be invisible in our daily lives. In this course, we will traverse diverse perspectives on water. The journey begins with an exploration of the mysteries of water's properties on the molecular level, zooming out through its central role in biological and geological scales. Next, we travel through the history of human civilization, highlighting the fundamental part water has played throughout, including the complexities of water policy, privatization, and pricing in today's world. Attention then turns to technology and innovation, emphasizing the daunting challenges dictated by increasing water stress and a changing climate as well as the enticing opportunities to achieve a secure global water future.

Flooding the World: Creation and Restoration in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and India
Cathleen Chopra-McGowan
University of Chicago Divinity School
From Genesis to the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Rig Veda to modern novels like Geraldine McCaughrean’s Not the End of the World (2004) and Jeanette Winterson’s Boating for Beginners (1997), humans have repeatedly accounted for, imagined, and ironized civilizational collapse and restoration through stories of catastrophic floods.  These texts, modern and ancient, are fraught with political, religious, and historical background. In this course, we will compare these texts, focusing on literary issues like narrative plot, the construction of characters, the literary devices used, and the role of the narrator in telling the story of the flood. We will attempt to ascertain why imaginings of a deluge are generative while being attuned to the complex differences between the ancient narratives and their significantly different afterlives. Through sustained inquiry, we will both challenge the notion of sacred exceptionalism even while confronting the enduring presence of this trope in the post-modern novel. 

Spring
Water: Economics, Policy, and Society
Professor Sabina Shaikh
Environmental and Urban Studies
Concerns about water have a long history in human societies. While modern advances in water technology and new ways of considering water economics and policy have emerged to address stressors from development pressures, land-use changes and urbanization, water problems continue to evolve across the globe. These problems, while rooted in scarcity, continue to become more complex due to the myriad human and natural forces. Droughts and water shortages persist, putting pressure on agricultural production and urban water use, while the increased frequency and severity of rainfall and tropical storms, already being experienced globally, are only projected to grow in intensity and duration under climate change. This course examines how to design, implement and evaluate water-based policies at multiple scales under pressures from climate change, development, globalization and population growth. Students will explore water from the perspective of the social sciences and public policy, with attention to behavioral dimensions of water use and water conservation. Students in the course will consider and evaluate policy interventions to manage water and governance of public goods including property rights, water trading, and water pricing.

Summer
2020 College Summer Institute
The Place of Water: histories, presence, and futures

Contact

Julie Marie Lemon, Senior Director
773.702.8029
jmlemon@uchicago.edu