WHAT'S AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POND?

 

While foraging at the National Building Arts Center (NBAC) to make natural dyes for a weaving, I discovered an overlooked pond on the back of the site. It is a void below the horizon — an inverse of the remaining Cahokia mounds above. The pond rests in the American Bottom, a confluence of rivers, indigenous histories, and ongoing corporate occupation. The village (Sauget, IL) was incorporated by Monsanto and is known for Superfund sites and toxic accumulations of PCBs. Today, NBAC preserves architectural artifacts among the infrastructure of the site's former foundry. Beyond concrete sand-casting bunkers and adjacent steel trusses and cast iron columns is a retention pond that, over time, morphed from a 'deep pit' used by the foundry through human and ecological intervention. 

 

The pond is an oasis in a region known for environmental contamination. It is an archive nestled within the museum's architectural archive, both of which receive and hold material histories and accumulations. It contains detritus from the foundry: grinding discs, rusty steel fragments, ceramic tubes, and slag, which I remove through a process of "Reverse Extraction," a small healing gesture toward the local landscape.

When spring rains fill the basin, my deaccessioning is interrupted, so I turn to the pond's perimeter. Each time I visit, I see new signs of life. Crayfish slip from ceramic tubes, ducks paddle across the surface, and frogs shoot from the mud upon feeling the vibration of my footsteps. Raccoons, cranes, and canines leave traces in the silty soil. I document native and ruderal species: Horseweed erupts through coarse gravel. Phragmites (Common reed) and Interior Sandbar Willow stand tall in dark loam. Heart leaf peppervine, Trumpet vine, and Riverbank Grape weave an impassable canopy above the inlet, where water enters after traveling down rooftops and over and under impervious surfaces to feed the soft vessel that is the pond. 

 

Through special recording equipment and a collaboration with the Fowler-Finn Lab, I hear insect songs transmitted through leaves and stems. 90% of their communication is imperceptible to humans. Access to an electron microscope revealed diatom fossils on a rusty steel fragment. These microscopic algae produce 20% of the oxygen humans breathe through photosynthesis. 
Their glassy cell walls are made of silica, a material that shifts between basins in the American Bottom. It is in sand from the River and foundry, in the stalks of Phragmites (Common Reed), and lines the pond.

When one's gaze shifts from macro to micro, the pond becomes a lush oasis of resilience and regeneration. It also holds space for interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration. Activities in, around, and in response to this site-within-a-site acknowledge the duality of ecological abundance and environmental complexity, and celebrate the persistence and resilience of its non-human inhabitants. It offers a place to contemplate what is preserved, what can't be undone, and what might be transformed for a regenerative future.