Sonneteer - INFRASTRUCTURE
A collaborative design book, using the photography of Chicago based artist Douglas Reid Fogelson, as a starting point."Sonneteer, A visual composition on selected components of our built environment." will be for sale in May 2007,in MoMa and PS1 bookstores.
Chapter 1: Infrastructure -- Sebastien Derenoncourt
The invisible infrastructure of a lived world; May 2005
"Now, the market is under 20 feet of water and voices that once rang out have been silenced."
"My animals are gone, my house is gone and my family is gone."
"The area still is deeply submerged under stagnant water rank with the smell of death."
"The man who used to sell mangoes died. He was missing most of his teeth."
"Thursday of this past week my mother’s house in southern Indiana, was damaged by a tornado.
Her solid oak and brick house built in the 20’s; survived one of the hundred year old, twenty feet tall pine trees lining her lane, falling onto the house, breaking her windows, and piercing her roof.
Luckily my family had moved to the safety of the basement in time, and where unharmed.
The electricity, water, gas and phone service where unavailable for about 5 hours, but they along with most of the neighbors in their small rural town escaped mostly unharmed;
though some with really bad damage to their properties. The town recuperated quickly and it’s infrastructure prevented a worse situation.
Water from the overflowing creeks flooded some of the roads and houses, but mostly drained away trough the sewage system.
Electric, gas and phone utility crews quickly repaired most damage to their respective systems and prevented more destruction by isolating dangerous situations, and preventing
any collateral accidents.
In contrast earlier in the same week, intense rains and the resulting floods wrecked havoc on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean. Death and destruction swept upon the poorest
country of the western hemisphere, adding stress to already insupportable conditions.
Unprepared from the violence and power of nature's wrath in a country without the means to protect itself against such trauma; thousands where buried alive, drowned or crushed
under tones of water, mud and debris sliding down bare hills and cliffs.
In its past Haiti was covered in dense forest and fertile valleys.
Now overburdened by the needs of an overflowing population, cleared of trees and bush, devoid of wildlife, it stands barren, fruitless and desolate, unable to sustain or give life.
Most if not all of the casualties were from the invisible and disenfranchised peasants who populate the countryside.
As in most of the rest of the third world these people are not even exact numbers on a spreadsheet, they are only estimates and exist nowhere but in the minds and eyes
of the people surrounding them.
Their stories, dreams, ideas, ideals and therefore their existence, was erased without a trace, as no other record of their presence is anywhere recorded.
"My animals are gone, my house is gone and my family is gone."
"The area still is deeply submerged under stagnant water rank with the smell of death."
"The man who used to sell mangoes died. He was missing most of his teeth."
"Thursday of this past week my mother’s house in southern Indiana, was damaged by a tornado.
Her solid oak and brick house built in the 20’s; survived one of the hundred year old, twenty feet tall pine trees lining her lane, falling onto the house, breaking her windows, and piercing her roof.
Luckily my family had moved to the safety of the basement in time, and where unharmed.
The electricity, water, gas and phone service where unavailable for about 5 hours, but they along with most of the neighbors in their small rural town escaped mostly unharmed;
though some with really bad damage to their properties. The town recuperated quickly and it’s infrastructure prevented a worse situation.
Water from the overflowing creeks flooded some of the roads and houses, but mostly drained away trough the sewage system.
Electric, gas and phone utility crews quickly repaired most damage to their respective systems and prevented more destruction by isolating dangerous situations, and preventing
any collateral accidents.
In contrast earlier in the same week, intense rains and the resulting floods wrecked havoc on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean. Death and destruction swept upon the poorest
country of the western hemisphere, adding stress to already insupportable conditions.
Unprepared from the violence and power of nature's wrath in a country without the means to protect itself against such trauma; thousands where buried alive, drowned or crushed
under tones of water, mud and debris sliding down bare hills and cliffs.
In its past Haiti was covered in dense forest and fertile valleys.
Now overburdened by the needs of an overflowing population, cleared of trees and bush, devoid of wildlife, it stands barren, fruitless and desolate, unable to sustain or give life.
Most if not all of the casualties were from the invisible and disenfranchised peasants who populate the countryside.
As in most of the rest of the third world these people are not even exact numbers on a spreadsheet, they are only estimates and exist nowhere but in the minds and eyes
of the people surrounding them.
Their stories, dreams, ideas, ideals and therefore their existence, was erased without a trace, as no other record of their presence is anywhere recorded.
