Basset's Creek
What's too far and what's not far enough? The edges of our agreements with ourselves and each other. What we all hold as true and self evident. What we argue about and disagree on. The edge between what is real and unreal. The edge between what is sustainable and what is not. The outskirts of the city and of rural life. The edge between civilization and the wild. This idea of this and of that, of us and of them, is not only out there but it is in here, inside us, inside the boundaries, the city limits inside of every division. There is no convenient disconnect, there is no disconnection. Bassett’s Creek is the exploration of the inner wild. A collection of documentation pointing to evidence that we have only ever been recreating what is inside on the outside of us.
Bassett's Creek Project is primarily a collection of documents mapped together by a watershed buried beneath a city. It is an otherwise unexplainably blighted area of the City of Lakes, Minneapolis, MN, a no mans land that has been forgotten in the heart of a city, pushed willfully from awareness one generation after another. It is a part of the city that some Americans only view by car and never actually experience on a tangible level.
These documents of the past and present of the creek investigate the origin and cause of this blighted space. Since the incorporation of the City of Minneapolis the creek as a force and phenomena has left it's mark on the land. This project identifies natural forces, the city’s economic needs and the inhabitants intent to control the watershed.
