Hydrofeminist Map Collective

Formed in September 2024 by Nora Almeida, Estefania Mompean Botias, andrea haenggi, and Jordan Packer, the Collective explores relationships between human bodies and water bodies through somatic and interventionist public actions in the context of climate chaos. At the heart of our project is the concept of the “sentinel body”—a body attuned to its surroundings, sensing and transmitting subtle shifts in the environment. Through this awareness, we explore what it means to “become with water,” cultivating a deeper relationship to the ecological and social dynamics of urban waterscapes.

October 19, 2024 Gowanus, Lenapehoking. Event photos by Chris Jordan.

On October 19, 2024 the Hydrofeminist Map Collective organized the action: Spatial Intervention and Urban Transformation. The public was invited to join the collective and temporarily transform part of the radically human-altered landscape of Gowanus, a former tidal marsh. Together, we created an ephemeral map with our bodies as we explored and interacted with the environment, looked for signs of emergency, and enacted a collective intervention guided by the interspecies disruption and water of “memory” in Gowanus.

Group on Whole Foods "Public Promenade" somatic movement
Group on Whole Foods "Public Promenade" somatic movement
Group on Whole Foods "Public Promenade" somatic movement
Hydrofeminists looking at canal from dead end on Bond
Public looking at canal from dead end on Bond
Installing a sign on a barbed wire fence
Hydrofeminists looking at canal from dead end on Bond
Group gathered at Bond Street dead end
Crossing 3rd street after installing a sign
Is toxicity a network wheatpaste
Public interacts with signage during mapping
annotated signage by participants
Tough install inside of a mesh net over a fence on private property
what does urban change feel like?
Wheat Paste
Gathering at Bond Street dead end
How do we embody the memory of water?
September 22, 2024 in Downtown Brooklyn, Lenapehoking. Event photos by Aiesha Bennett

The Hydrofeminist Map Collective led an Embodied Mapping and Urban Transformation workshop on September 22, 2024 at BRIC in downtown Brooklyn in collaboration with SPCUNY. The event was a plenary session at the 2024 Creative Time Summit exploring States of Emergence. During the workshop, we used somatic counter-mapping as a tool to pay attention hidden and visible waterways and around and inside of us. Through our mapping, we temporarily transformed the urban space immediately outside of the Summit and our perceptions of and relationship to it and one another.