Boulder Flooding: Remembering Warnings from “Weather Report” (Art/Climate Change)

[KoKo]

Boulder Flooding: Remembering Warnings from “Weather Report”
by Subhankar Banerjee

On Thursday as I was reading about war and peace, headlines about a flash flood in Boulder kept arriving all through the day: “At least 3 dead in Colorado flooding; Boulder ‘overwhelmed with water’” (LA Times), “Flood threat still strong as 3 killed in Colorado” (USA Today), “Boulder flood: 2nd death confirmed, county calls in National Guard to assist with rescues” (Boulder Daily Camera), “Boulder Flooding: Deadly High Waters in Northern Colorado Force Evacuations, Cause Mudslides” (Huffington Post), …

Soon I’ll talk about the flood, but first the warning.

Six years ago, on September 14, I had walked along the Boulder Creek, following the blue discs in artist Mary Miss’ outdoor art installation “Connect the Dots: Mapping the Highwater Hazards and History of Boulder Creek.” Both Mary and I were participating artists (“29 women, 12 men, 10 collaborations”) in what was quite possibly the first comprehensive art exhibition on climate change: “Weather Report: Art and Climate Change.” The exhibition idea was conceived by Marda Kirn of EcoArts; was organized by renowned curator, writer and activist Lucy Lippard; and was presented by the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) in collaboration with EcoArts.

My photographs from the Arctic were presented at BMoCA and University of Colorado’s Norlin Library. I also gave a lecture at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), focusing on climate change issues in the far North. In addition to NCAR, Boulder also has the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Marda Kirn told The New York Times that Boulder has the “highest density of climate scientists in the world,” which the Times affectionately mocked in their review of the exhibition, “as if climatology Ph.D.’s were stacked like rolls of paper towels at Costco.” Boulder was indeed a perfect home for Weather Report.

On that September 14, I had difficulty imagining: A deadly flood in that little creek, really?

Mary Miss wrote in her artist statement in the accompanying exhibition catalog:

“How can the imagination be provoked to envision an event outside our daily experience, one that completely alters the landscape we occupy? How can the predicted flooding of Boulder Creek be made tangible to the residents of this city? … Looking from one point to the next, connecting the dots [painted blue discs], the level of a flood [500-year flood] is no longer abstract. This is one part of a larger study about the flooding of Boulder Creek that would more fully reveal additional aspects of the nature of a flood, and how future floods would affect the city.”

Her blue discs became very popular. Residents were not only enjoying seeing those attached to trees while walking or biking along the creek, but discs were disappearing too—vandalize would be too harsh a word, instead it’s more like people were taking a few back home like we take sand dollars from a beach. I helped Mary replace a few, fast. Mary Miss’ art was “a deceptively simple outdoor installation that powerfully illustrated the potential danger of climate change in the immediate locale,” art critic Suzanne Boettger wrote in Art in America special issue “Art & Politics.”

For the installation, she had worked with scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the US Geological Survey. In fact, art-science collaboration was one of the key strengths of Weather Report. “One of the principles of this exhibition…was to give artists access to scientists working in the fields that they hoped to address,” Lucy Lippard wrote. “This process was at once fruitful and delicate. (Scientists are determined to remain politically neutral in order to retain their objectivity; artists chafe at constrictions).”

Artists, however, are often not taken seriously when it comes to addressing the climate crisis. Lawrence Wechsler had written an article on “artistic responses to global warming” in The Nation. Lippard pointed out that Wechsler “pretty much dismisses artists who address the issue ‘head on’.” She strongly objected to Wechsler’s “oversimplification” and wrote:

“At best [artists] can make the hot breath of climate change both vivid and immediate to this visually oriented society…They can also deconstruct the ways we are manipulated by the powers that be and help open our eyes to what we must do to resist and survive.”

Weather Report did “deluge the populace with artwork” exhibited all across town in numerous venues and outdoors. I surmise that no one in Boulder had imagined then that the real “deluge” would arrive—so soon.

Colorado was plagued with devastating wildfires this summer. Now come the floods. A large storm system dumped up to 10 inches of rain, since Monday, in central Colorado, causing flash floods. “Flooding extended all along the Front Range mountains, including the cities of Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, Greeley, Aurora and Boulder,” the Associated Press reported. Boulder has been hit hardest though.

“This is not an ordinary day, it is not your ordinary disaster,” Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said on Thursday. Referring to flood warning he said, “You know, we sort of roll our eyes when they say you have to be prepared for the 100-year flood, so here we are.”

Much More of this very good read about climate change at:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/13-7

[gopiscrap]

1. some are saying that this is biggest flood there in a 1,000 years

[kestrel91316]

4. And it's not just Boulder. In Big Thompson it's a repeat of 1976 (if not worse),

and the damage out in Weld County is going to be terrible as it floods farmland and destroys entire farms by the hundreds. Homes have been destroyed even north of Fort Collins. Morrison/Evergreen have damage, so does El Paso County/CoSpgs. And the damage even extends down all the way through the mountains of New Mexico.

[bluedigger]

2. 1894 Boulder flood "from the top of the flour mill."

[ColumbusLib]

3. Very interesting

Thanks for sharing. I grew up in NE Colorado and went to college in Greeley; the strangest thing in seeing the photos is that this area is usually so incredibly dry. I had never owned or used an umbrella until I moved to Texas at the age of 26 and found out what a real rain was!

[kestrel91316]

5. Yep. I went to college for 8 years in Fort Collins and never owned an umbrella. WTH for???