Robin Michals

Project Statement-Our Neighborhood
Our Neighborhood juxtaposes sites of daily life with the infrastructure of industrial production or as Jedediah Britton-Purdy writing recently in the NYT has called it, “ the technological exoskeleton for the species.” If you live near a factory or refinery, you hear it, you smell it, you know it is dangerous but you accept it because either you have no choice or it is your best choice. Either your grandfather built the house when he immigrated from Mexico or this neighborhood is actually better than some others you can afford. You are resigned to the dangers that threaten your future in exchange for having a roof over your head right now.

We all live in that house, that neighborhood. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report last fall stating that the global temperature will rise 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over pre-industrial levels by 2040, causing calamitous worldwide damage. The need to reduce CO2 emissions is on a direct collision course with the oil and gas industry which due to hydraulic fracturing is currently expanding. Our grandfathers built this house and really there is no where else to go. We are resigned to what the future brings. We feel grief for what is coming and what has been lost. There is now is a term for this: solastagia.

Website www.robinmichals.com