BUTTERMILK
BUTTERMILK (2023)
Governors Island
Natalie Collette Wood and Source_Materials
Buttermilk invites visitors to consider the shifting relationships between the urban and the pastoral, land and water, past and present. Through the use of image collage, stop-motion animation, touch, sound, movement, and light, Buttermilk offers an immersive environment in which to contemplate Governors Island and its ever evolving meaning to our city and its surrounding waterways.
According to local legend, Brooklyn farmers once waded their dairy cows across the Buttermilk Channel at low tide, so they could graze the fields of Governors Island. A different - and perhaps incompatible - theory asserts that the passage between Red Hook and the island was so choppy, it could churn milk into buttermilk before it reached the markets of Manhattan.
Or perhaps it was the frothy channel itself? We prefer to keep the answer suspended in the air. Like these fabric images floating in the harbor breeze.