Q&A

What is Ghost Nets?

Ghost Nets was a nine year Environmental Art project that concluded in 2000. The work has been funded under the umbrella of several private foundations, with generous in kind services and sales of Rahmani's artwork. Ghost Nets took place on the exposed east side of Vinalhaven Island, a fishing village 13 miles off mid-coast Maine. There were several layers of reclamation: personal, conceptual and literal. This web site concerns itself with tracking the literal, physical reclamation, and outreaching the ideas developed in the original project.

Why is it called Ghost Nets?

Conceptually, the central metaphor of Ghost Nets is the lost drift nets, called ghost nets, that have been strip-mining the sea since they came into use. It is estimated that there are 2,240 abandoned fishing nets per 64 nautical square miles in the Gulf of Maine.1 These nets are invisible and indestructible. I claimed them as a metaphor for how pervasive and persistent bad habits and routines are, the trap of the familiar that can be as deadly personally as the nets are to sea life. Addressing the problem of lost ocean habitat depended on dealing with land activities, particularly lost salt marsh habitat.

Why did you do Ghost Nets?

The purpose of my project was to recreate keystone linkage in a flyzone, within myself as much as in the land around me.

What is Environmental Art?

The hallmark of the cutting edge in Environmental Art is a theoretical basis in restorationist ethics and frequently, Ecofeminism. It emerged as a movement from earlier Land art, activist and Feminist performance art strategies and often includes intensive collaboration with scientists and increasingly, policy makers.

What is a salt marsh?

The fertility of the salt marsh is something I know so well, that it came as a surprise to realize that many people have no idea how crucial it is. It is where most of our fish spawn and seabirds nest. It is where many, many species, including migratory birds forage, and it is what stands between our trash into the ocean and final contamination of the ocean. It is lost at astronomical rates and one casualty is the fisheries. It is what allows the coastline to be flexible to geomorphic changes, alternately absorbing tidal impact and creating new land. It is considered by ecologists to be he most fertile ecosystem on the planet.

Why nine years?

The decision to make Ghost Nets a nine year project was based on how long I thought it would take to realistically see any environmental change.

What personal changes were needed to complete the project?

Ghost Nets was divided into three phases related to personal and ecological restoration.

The Medicine Wheel Garden phase, 1991-93, studied the microhabitats on a two and a half acre site of degraded coastal land. It began with inviting a Native American Elder, Grandfather Thunder Cloud, to bless the land before reclamation began. Very quickly, I realized the integrity of the project would depend on living here full-time, which I have done, while involving myself in local issues, as the watershed, town planning and Ferry service. During these years I confronted what personal changes I need to accept to make the reclamation complete.

KindWind, 1993-97, concentrated on protecting the watershed on a sole aquifer island from salt water intrusion caused by shoreline over development. During this phase, plant communities and upland riparian zone habitats were fine tuned in preparation for the salt marsh reclamation. During this phase I accepted what I would have to give up and what required a hard line to make the salt marsh successful.

Traffic Dance, 1997-2000, the final phase of the project began with the restoration of a salt marsh on the site. It has not been concerned with establishing alliances that will extend the lessons learned from this site to the remaining Gulf of Maine. The concentrated attention to this site, its relationship to the fisheries industry and the individuals who make up that industry, has global implications for how we will protect our resources into the next millennia.

What comes after Ghost Nets?

The conceptual basis for my new work, the "Cities & Oceans of If" finds its origin in Ghost Nets. In that decade long work I explored coastal degradation and restoration on a small site. In the "Cities & Oceans of If", I am applying that experience to larger, interconnected systems. In "Ghost Nets", achieving those goals can be seen as a story of loss and change. In the "Cities & Oceans of If", the story is of choice and the hope of redemption.

In "Ghost Nets", I brought together my artistic concerns with the personal, political and ecological by seizing the metaphors of degradation and healing to re-shape my environment. Moving to a small island off the coast of Maine, I embarked upon the restoration of an environmentally degraded former dump site to its ecological niche as a salt marsh and wildlife corridor. My goal was to marry scientific observation to my artistic vision. The completed "Ghost Nets" site is remarkable for the qualities of light and sound in the healed environment.

All of my work tracks the process of healing. Since the sixties, I have tracked my relationship to time, healing and incremental change. Since 1985, this journaling has been formalized in computer generated schedules. Each small manageable page then becomes a unique template for a larger holistic vision of global relationships, visualized aerially, moving from a micro to a macro view and resulting in actual earth restoration work.

The "Cities & Oceans of If" are based on the idea that small linkages have dramatic implications; that our urban rural relationship has been interrupted but is vital to our survival. At the crux of this relationship is water. In the "Cities & Oceans of If", taking place in a series of residencies in colleges and universities internationally, individual urban centers are studied for pre-settlement large predator animal migration routes and waterways. This information is then overlaid on exiting infrastructure and geological mapping to discover new possibilities for patterning. Because we have not planned for water any better than most of us plan for love, we are now threatened with it's loss. The goal of the "Cities and Oceans of If" is to re-think our relationship to water by taking people out of center stage and seeing our interdependencies.

How did "Ghost Nets" escape the trap of self-involvement?

The small working habitat that was "Ghost Nets" was conceptually contextualized in a study of the Gulf of Maine. That work is what now makes the new project, the "Cities & Oceans of If" possible. In these projects, the goal is always to identify the one small keystone linkage whose conservation or restoration can have a larger impact. In the town of Vinalhaven, where the original "Ghost Nets" project took place, I identified that as the Ferry because that is the point of entry to the ecosystem. As a result, all that was learned from "Ghost Nets" came to be applied to the design of the landscaping and public rock art for the new Ferry terminal, to be completed the Fall of 2000. An excerpt from the original proposal for that work follows:

"One of the goals of this project design was to greet our guests, when they come off our Ferry, with subliminal impressions of how delicate and lovely the local habitat is. The design is conceptualized as abstract signage, pointing people to significant local elements. The town of Vinalhaven has become a tourist destination before an infrastructure could be put in place to educate visitors about our fragile ecosystem. We wanted to make, paradoxically, a strong and bold statement that was nonetheless subtle and blended with the native wildness. Practically, we needed to provide a terminal setting that is gracious and unpretentious. We tried to remain true to New England values of efficient frugality and low maintenance, to enhance elements of the natural setting without obstructing views for safety and to incorporate the most vivid of our beloved local and indigenous elements, as the wonderful boulders typical of Vinalhaven, shad and alba plena roses in bloom. Visual focal points have been designed that will each serve different socio-psychological functions and yet blend with a holistic vision."

1 Reference: "Manned Submersible Assessment of Lost Ghost Gill Nets in the GOM" - H.A. Carr & R.A. Cooper 1987 "Oceans '87 Proceedings" Pg. 622-624.