Water Will Be Here, 2010

Eric Corriel - Brooklyn, USA

Video Installation

Despite the attention the issue of climate change has received, for most of us it still remains a remote and abstract issue that resides somewhere far away, both temporally and geographically.  While we may identify climate change with specific effects – melting ice caps, floods in Pakistan, or future water shortages in the Middle East – most of us do not have a sense of these impacts becoming a reality in our own backyards, in our own lifetimes. 

This project renders these abstract ideas into concrete experiences to be seen and felt, here and now. The site-specific digital video installation imagines what it might feel like if sea levels rose to the point where cities found themselves underwater. Previously shown in Brooklyn, New York and Atlanta, Georgia, Water Will Be Here brings us face-to-face with contemporary climate issues as well as questions of geologic inevitability.

Raised in Long Island, Eric Corriel received a Bachelors of Arts in Philosophy from Cornell University, also studying Fine Art and Computer Science. He later received a Diplôme National d'Arts Plastiques (National Diploma of Fine Art) from the École Régionale Supérieure d'Expression Plastique, Lille, France. He now resides in Brooklyn, NY.

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Commerce Court West, 25 King Street West (Large viewing area on Bay Street south of King Street West. Limited capacity for participatory element accessed through West Building lobby doors on King Street West.)

This project is both indoors and outdoors.