Going With the Flow: Art, Actions, and Western Waters

Curated by Lucy Lippard

at SITE Santa Fe

14 April to 31 July 2023

There Must Be Other Names For The River (Marisa Demarco, Dylan McLaughlin,  Jessica Zeglin)

The river is the reason we can live in this part of the arid high desert. It’s why there are animals and plants, villages, and cities.

Today, the Rio Grande is referred to in many ways: Río Bravo del Norte, Posoge in Tewa, Paslápaane in Tiwa, Hañapakwa in Towa, Mets’ichi Chena in Keresan, Kótsoi by the Jicarilla Apache, and Tó Baʼáadi in Diné. It formed as a water source approximately five million years ago, carving into its current shape one million years ago. Given that span of time, the hotter climate the river now experiences is a sudden injury.

The river has supplied life-giving water and has been manipulated to both enable and curtail life and movement. Though there are days or weeks when the river is swollen, consuming beaches and banks, hydrologists and water managers tell us that the river’s natural cycles are so far off-kilter that it can’t seem to right itself. One good year does not deter the danger.

In the big picture, snowpack is decreasing, evaporation is increasing, and thirstier plants in hotter temperatures consume more water. Monsoons are less common. Human-caused climate change, a resulting megadrought, government diversion projects, and overuse shrink flows and damage the river’s ecosystems. Dry, cracked riverbed extends for miles throughout the southern region of the river.

"To see this happening in spring is shocking. But we shouldn’t be surprised. We knew this could happen,” reporter Laura Paskus wrote in 2018. In 2020, the same thing happened. In 2022, Albuquerque experienced unprecedented days of dry rio. New Mexico contributes an outsized portion of greenhouse gasses to the cause compared with other states, and the oil and gas industry coughs up a lot of that. As journalist Danielle Prokop wrote, “Extinction is not a promise. It’s a process.” 

The weaponization of the river as a border is a threat to life. We too often see the river as a division rather than an invitation for unification.  In response to these tensions, Marisa Demarco, Dylan McLaughlin, and Jessica Zeglin developed There Must Be Other Names For The River, a music composition spurred by severe drought and stretches of empty riverbed where there should be water. Ever-evolving, this data-based musical score has inspired a variety of expressions—live performance, a mural, sound and object-based installation, and a web-based gathering place for interactive listening and contribution.

In performance, There Must Be Other Names For The River is the embodiment of flows recorded at six gauge stations along the Rio Grande’s 1,800 mile length. Each singer works from a graphic score representing nearly 50 years of data at one point along the river, relaying this historical reference, as well as their personal relationships, hopes, and fears for the river. In the final section of the score, the performers project possible futures to the year 4220. 

Demarco, McLaughlin, and Zeglin implore the audience  to “consider the many ways we interact with the river we currently call the Rio Grande” and to “consider the many names people who live with the river have called it for thousands of years. Consider the many ways of relating to the river that these names represent.”

There Must Be Other Names For The River can be heard along the length of the ramada in SITE Santa Fe’s neighboring Railyard Park. The singers’ pre-recorded voices emerge from speakers placed along the pathway, representing more the entire stretch of Rio Grande. The musicians engage with the river’s past, present, and future. The body of water is also articulated as part of this work in a large-scale durational painting featured inside SITE Santa Fe. The mural is updated with daily measurements from the point along the river nearest to the museum, evolving the mural’s shape and flow.

The conclusion of this multifaceted presentation of There Must Be Other Names For the River is a live choral performance presented in SITE Santa Fe’s auditorium on July 29, 2023. Local and regional musicians who live along the rio embody the work. Monica Demarco sings the Headwaters; Ryan Dennison sings the Albuquerque area; Kenneth Cornell sings just below Elephant Butte Dam; Antonia Montoya sings Juárez/El Paso; Mauro Woody sings Big Bend; and Marya Errin Jones sings the mouth of the river at the Gulf of Mexico. Performing the information, as well as from their personal relationships with the river, the vocalists envision possibilities further into the future than scientific studies are so far willing to project.

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