Swamp – Wetland – Bank is a speculative analytic for considering the ways different settler regimes of accumulation violently reconfigure wetscapes. It evolved in conversation with Ojibwe artist Andrea Carlson and is unfolding across a series of ongoing projects, both collaborative and individual.
“Swamp. Wetland. Bank” – in dialogue with Andrea Carlson’s “Maskiig: An Anishinaabe (post)Apocalypse”, here
“How do you say swamp is Anishinaabemowin”, Rozalinda Borcila and Andrea Carlson, with Heid Erdrich in Reservoir
Hydrologic Unit Code 071200 – Nibi Ezhi-Nisidawaabanjigaade Ozhibii’igeowin 071200, Rozalinda Borcila and Andrea Carlson, in Watershed – Wayekwaajiwan. We are grateful that the entire exhibition has been fully documented in Anishinaabemowin by www.ojibwe.net.
Andrea Carlson gaye Rozalinda Borcilă ogii-ozhitoonaawaa o’o daa-waabanjigaadeg nibikaan- adaawewin miziwe ateg Chigaagong, dash gwayak-izhinikaadeg Nibi Ezhi-Nisidawaabanjigaade Ozhibii’igewin (HUC) 071200. Nibikaan-adaawewin dash oshki-nisidawaabanjigaadewan, dash giizheninjigaadeg wii-adaawaaniwang. Mii dash nibikaan-adaawewining, mazina’ige-adaawanidiwin aabajichigaadeg dash izhi-adaawewaad nibikaan banaajichigaadewin (odaapinigaade) gaye nibikaan adaawewin (dagonigaade). Dibishkoo akakanakide-adaawewin, nibikaan-adaawewin dash aabajichigaadeg wii-banaajitoowaad nibikaanan: giishpin anoonji nibikaanan banaajichigaadeg, owii-adaawewag anoonji.
Full essay accompanying the installation, please see here
Andrea Carlson and Rozalinda Borcilă’s video installation presents an encounter with wetland banks scattered throughout Chicago’s wetland market, the legal name for which is Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC) 071200. Wetland banks are a new kind of wetscape, constructed specifically to generate stacks of financial assets (credits) that can be bought and sold in specialized markets. Across a region called a wetland market, credit swapping allows speculators to trade wetland destruction (debit) in one place for wetland banking (credit) in another. Like carbon offsets, wetland banking exacerbates the very environmental destruction it claims to mitigate: the more wetland destruction, the greater the expansion of wetland markets. The first entirely speculative wetland bank in the United States was built in HUC 071200 and it became the blueprint for the federal rollout of wetland markets.