1.7 min readBy Published On: June 7th, 2021Categories: Lifestyle0 Comments on POLARITY is officially in Fort Point Channel

Both beautiful and frightening

Have you seen it yet? Just the corner of large building rising to the surface of the waters in the Fort Point Channel.  Artist Zy Baer has completed her floating art piece that captures the not so distant future when the channel rises and floods and only the upper floor of a building remains. When you drive over the Summer Street Bridge – you can sneak a peek!

About POLARITY

POLARITY is a call to action to Boston’s richest to throw their weight behind a literal fight for our lives. Designed as a site-specific trompe-l’oeil, the piece recreates the iconic architecture of the neighborhood it occupies Boston’s Fort Point—which, in conjunction with neighboring Seaport, is now the wealthiest district in Boston. The wealthy contribute more to climate change than the non-wealthy, but will experience fewer of its consequences because of their greater access to resources.

Baer explains, “Money is loud. We need to make change on a societal scale, and in a capitalist society, those changes are more likely to occur if they’re backed by people with the power of capital. This means supporting land-back initiatives (returning stolen land to Indigenous nations.) It means curbing the behavior of a handful of massive corporations that put their profit above the survival of every being that lives on Earth. It means making a commitment to survival at the expense of status-quo power structures.”

The name of the piece derives from the multiple polarities involved with the issue of water and climate change: the polarity of water molecules; the melting ice caps in the poles; the decrease of potable water versus the increase in flooding as sea levels rise; the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, in terms of their contributions to climate change versus the ability of each to survive and perhaps thrive as our world is permanently altered.

Location: Fort Point Channel “Art Basin” between the Summer Street and Congress Street bridges, near South Station and the Boston Children’s Museum.

 

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