SONG/ LAND/ SEA: WAI Water Warning
Water Clock + Binakol Blessing Light Blades & Flags
Commissioned by The Rose Kennedy Greenway Public Art Program curated by Dr. Audrey Lopez
July 2024 - Summer 2025

SONG/ LAND/ SEA: WAI Water Warning emerges as a public art installation and performance series serving as a warning of environmental change, echoing amidst the accelerating climate crisis. As our earth undergoes rapid transformation, this work stands as a stark reminder of the profound shifts reshaping the coastline of the City of Boston.

WAI Water Warning series that addresses climate change in a two-part public art installation: Water Clock a free-standing sculpture made of cement, brass bowl, sailor's rope, garnet, brass nautical bell with the engraving WAI, and steel; and Binakol Blessing Banners and Flags, is a series of four large scale flags and twelve 15-foot tall digital mural vinyl banners.

This public art project is commissioned by The The Rose Kennedy Greenway which includes a sculpture, four flags, and 12 light blades activated by WAI designs spanning across two land parcels on the Greenway in Downtown Boston. This work transcends mere aesthetics, serving as a call to action. Through its evocative symbolism and participatory nature, it implores viewers to confront the realities of climate change and mobilize towards collective resilience and environmental justice.

This public art and performative series focusing on climate crisis and the devastating results of global warming, sea levels rising and coastal flooding resulting in environmental racism connected to gentrification and displacement of communities resulting from the construction of the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway (1954-1959), and further impacted by the Big Dig (1991-2006), a mega-construction project which placed the Expressway underground and built a park on top, The Greenway, which opened in 2008. Climate change is not a distant threat but an urgent reality, exacerbating existing inequalities and disproportionately impacting marginalized communities. Along the Greenway this installation resides across from Chinatown where the effects of environmental racism are keenly felt, with neighboring Roxbury and Dorchester facing the brunt of urban heat islands.

At the heart of the installation is the Water Clock, that cradles at its center a nautical bell with the letters WAI or waiwai in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian Language) translates to water, which can also mean wealth and life force—this concept is embedded into a monumental water drop—a symbol of lamentation for the futures at stake. This bell, activated by the public and live performance, rings across the Greenway, and tolls a reminder of the paths ahead. Knotted sailors' rope can be used to ring the bell as a warning and reminder that flood mitigation needs to start now.

Directly below the Water Clock and WAI bell lies a brass bowl, etched in collaboration with artist Lucia Perluck to transfer 2070 projection renderings from the 2016 Climate Ready Boston reports revealing vulnerable coastal areas and predicts what flood levels will be in the next 46 years. Surrounding these renders is I-Ching Water (Hex 29) as recorded in the Book of Changes which maps change to synchronicity. This Chinese divination and probability system was used in the creation of binary code modeled in the form of 0’s and 1’s. Lining the rim of the brass bowl is etching of binary code that translates to ‘All That Is Solid Melts into Air,’ the phrase points to the philosophy that “[everyone] at last are forced to face with [serious] sense the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow [community members]" this also speaking to climate change and global warming. Each I-Ching Water line measures years by 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 100 as rainfall marks the passage of time filling the inner depths to the bowl covering the etching of the Seaport, also known as, Fort Point Arts Neighborhood, Chinatown, East Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester.

Performance - Tabi Tabi Po Performance (May I Pass)

WAI Design | Bodies of Water

Tabi Tabi Po Performance (May I Pass)
Thursday, July 25 at 6:00-8:30 pm

Sculpture Viewing & Lawn Seating 6 - 7 pm
Performance 7:00 pm
Participatory Community Engagement 8:00 pm

3 Sections:
I - Cleansing Waters
II - Moving Bodies of Water
III - Binakol Blessing
IV - Community Bodies

Performers/ Bodies of Water:
Lani Asunción
Jimena Bermejo
Cai Diluvio
Joanna Tam

Mele & Dance:
Iwalani Kaluhiokalani
Noelani Kaluhiokalani Miranda

Musicians:
Forbes Graham - electronic horns
Trey Cregan - experimental electronics
Drew Barnet - percussion & on-site sound experimentation

Videography - Nicolas Andrew Visuals
Photography - Mel Taing

Audio Reference: SONG/ LAND/ SEA Album 2023-2024

Project support for SONG/LAND/SEA: WAI Water Warning & Binakol Blessing was provided by a Neighborhood Activation grant from the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture with the City of Boston.

Public Art on The Greenway is made possible with major support from the Barr Foundation, Goulston & Storrs, the Greenway Business Improvement District, the Mabel Louise Riley Foundation, Meet Boston, and the Wagner Foundation.  

Additional support is provided by the Deborah Munroe Noonan Memorial Fund, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee.

Special thanks to our collaborator, Yotel.