SUPERORG.NET

ARTIST - LED PUBLIC PLANNING PROCESS

Initiated through SPACES Gallery as a public art intervention, this project was further expanded and developed into an experimental model for public planning processes that include artists as key members.Conceived at first in response to the context of the Towpath Trail Extension Initiative, in conjunction with SPACES Gallery, Cuyahoga County Planning Commission and Cleveland Metroparks, the scope of the project expanded to include possible futures for the larger region and the Cuyahoga River Valley, it’s economic, industrial, cultural and environmental health and vitality.

Outcomes

The conversations and workshops conducted produced three proposals:
Water-cooled Slag at Mittal Steel to reduce their carbon footprint.
Art 4 Sustainability Process Propsal for Cuyahoga County
What do Artists Know? a knowledge claim for Embedded Artists

Steel Slag Processing Proposal
The monumental slag pile at the Cleveland Works Mittal Steel plant, seen by some as an icon of Cleveland identity, was the by-product of the conventional air-cooled method of making steel. After much technical research, Whitehead identified a low-carbon method using water for cooling to create a co-product known as GGBFS. This granulation method was proposed to Mittal Steel whose intention to implement the new process was scuttled by the 2008 economic recession.

What do Artists Know?
A second line of inquiry undertaken by Whitehead at this time, concerning the contributions artists were making to the planning process, generated the Knowledge Claim known as What do Artists Know? (2006) which became the basis for the Embedded Artist Project, conducted with the City of Chicago from 2008-2012.

ART 4 SUSTAINABILITY
Whitehead and Norton worked with local officials and citizens, already doing innovative work related to the rich intertwined histories of nature and industry in the region, transforming the problems of a shrinking Cleveland into assets, and the reconnection of the urban center with indigenous ecosystems. SUPERORG.net encompassed multiple projects and sites throughout the Cuyahoga Valley that can be developed as models, demonstration projects through which Cleveland will contribute to the global dialogue about sustainable communities. A full proposal of ideas for the area A4S, was generated for future use by the public art and planning communities.

CLEVELAND AS SUPERORGANISM

Given the importance of making ongoing environmental efforts more visible to the local community and the need to understand the inter-connectivity of ecologies, economies and relationships that make up the whole of the Cuyahoga Valley, Whitehead and Norton have conceptualized this project with the working title of SUPERORG.net, a term inspired by the new scientific category of superorganism, an organism made of interdependent and cooperating entities. SUPERORG.net encapsulates the idea that positive and lasting ecological changes must begin by considering the entire region geologically and holistically, from the standpoint of interdependent systems. SUPERORG.net therefore describes the ever-changing bio-technological relations of the entire Cuyahoga River Valley. In this respect, the SUPERORG.net project is actually a process ongoing in time and simultaneous in space.