new draft collective
Re-Current | Uncovered
October 2, 2016 | 2 - 5 pm
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Second in its series, Re-Current was an event based work which explored the ever changing sociopolitical and physical landscape of lower Manhattan and its surrounding waters.
On October 2nd 2016 New Draft Collective hosted a three hour sail with 40 passengers aboard the schooner Pioneer. The curated program included sound performances from land to water, conversations led by artists and curators which uncover the diverse histories of the New York Harbor’s shoreline along with moments of recreation and leisure.
Anchored by the performance piece “Voices Heard” the day’s events allowed for moments of reflective pause engaging the participatory passengers in a collective shared experience. The departure from the city brought forth new perspectives of the land illuminating a myriad historical exploration of cultural and physical evolution of the New York Harbor.
New Draft Collective is a Fractured Atlas Project
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Voices Heard is a site specific sound performance by New Draft Collective in collaboration with the Opera Collective. The performance will take place during the eventwork Re-Current between a group of 11 opera singers stationed on Governors Island and the 40 passengers aboard the Pioneer Sailing Vessel. Distilled to the simple salutations used as people come and go, arrive and depart, the piece is an auditory gesture to connect the water to the land, the public to the private, and asks us to
The passengers aboard the boat were invited through an invitation tree, each invited passenger (either a past or present collaborator with New Draft Collective) was subsequently invited to invite a guest. Attendees included: Artist Zoe Buckman and David Schwimmer, MoMA Curator Akili Tomassino, Gallerist Rob Hult & Syrette Lew, artists Ulrike Meuller, Mary Lum and Andrea Williams and poet Matthew Burgess.
Voices Heard is a site specific sound performance by New Draft Collective in collaboration with the Opera Collective. The performance will take place during the eventwork Re-Current between a group of 11 opera singers stationed on Governors Island and the 40 passengers aboard the Pioneer Sailing Vessel. Distilled to the simple salutations used as people come and go, arrive and depart, the piece is an auditory gesture to connect the water to the land, the public to the private, and asks us to
Pioneer was built as a sloop in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania in 1885 to carry sand mined near the mouth of the Delaware Bay to an iron foundry in Chester, Pennsylvania. Ten years later she was re-rigged as a schooner.
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In the days before paved roads, small coastal schooners such as Pioneer were the delivery trucks of their era, carrying various cargoes between coastal communities: lumber and stone from the islands of Maine, brick on the Hudson River, and oyster shell on the Chesapeake Bay. Almost all American cargo sloops and schooners were wood, but because she was built in what was then this country’s center of iron shipbuilding, Pioneer had wrought-iron hull. She was the first of only two cargo sloops built of iron in this country, and is the only iron-hulled American merchant sailing vessel still in existence.
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By 1930, when new owners moved her from the Delaware River to Massachusetts, she had been fitted with an engine, and was no longer using sails. In 1966 she was substantially rebuilt and turned into a sailing vessel once again. Today she plies the waters of NY Harbor carrying adults and children instead of cargo in her current role as a piece of “living history.”
