September 14, 2022: 7:27am – 8:06pm
12 hours, 39 minutes

36.5 / New York Estuary is the 9th and final work in the series, 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, 2013 – present.

This culminating work in New York City is a large-scale event, involving hundreds of people standing in the water in NYC and around the world.  YOU ARE INVITED TO JOIN US!

You are invited to participate in all aspects of this work!  If you’d like to help sustain the project and play a role in making this final performance and video work happen, please be in touch and we’ll send you more information!

Here’s what’s happening:

• A site-specific, community-engaged process: Sarah and NYC collaborators have been gathering at the water’s edge every month to build Kin To The Cove, a site-specific community-powered environmental public art process that connects local residents to the Cove and Water that surrounds NYC. This process aims to slowly build a team of 36.5 participants while building relationships with the water, imagining a healthier future, and committing to future stewardship of the site. Every stage of this process is documented.
• The live performance will take place in the Cove on Vernon Blvd at 31st Ave, where Astoria meets Long Island City. Sarah will stand in water for one full tidal cycle, inviting the public to join her by standing in water and/or marking the passing of hours from shore as “the human clock.” Artist collaborators will create interventions and installations to amplify the performance. Viewing stations around the Cove, on Roosevelt Island and Upper East Side, Manhattan will allow audiences to gather from various viewpoints.
• Simultaneous international performances will take place at previous 36.5 locations: the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Brazil, Kenya, Aotearoa-New Zealand, with core collaborators organizing relay performances events at the sites where the project initially took place.
• Livestream of this final performance will be broadcast online, outdoors and into venues in and around all five boroughs of New York City, around the country, and the world. Footage from the global performances will be layered-into the live-stream feed.
• The durational video artwork will be created at the same time. Six cameras will capture the entire performance in real-time. Within 10 days, this footage will be edited into a durational video work (same length as the performance: 12 hours, 39 minutes) and ready to premiere on site for the collaborating community to see it first.
• The final form video installation will consist of 12-18 channels of video (one from each of the six fully filmed international works in the series, each showing as a 2 or 3 channels) with six layers of audio.

2020
36.5 / Process, New York City, USA
Saturday, September 5, 6:43 AM – 7:09 PM
Partners: Socrates Sculpture Park,
Works on Water, LMCC and NYU

September 5, 2020 was the originally scheduled date for 36.5 / New York Estuary. This date was postponed due to the pandemic. But in order to mark this moment, September 5, 2020 became a pivotal moment for the project. We presented a Virtual Event as a first step in kicking off the process at the site in New York City, live-streaming directly from The Cove in Queens for 12 hours and 26 minutes, with collaborators at previous sites around the world tuning in throughout the day. This hyper-local engagement grew into a long-term community-powered collective committed to stewardship: Kin to the Cove.