PICNIC ISSUE No.6

Picnic Issue No.6: Fred Schmidt-Arenales IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT

Made in conjunction with Schmidt-Arenales's project with Picnic Curatorial Projects at The Power Sation Annex in Dallas, Texas. Riso Printed by Super Hit Press in Galveston. Edition of 75. 

Employing documentary and narrative filmmaking strategies, this experimental docu-fantasy explores the symbolic and unconscious underpinnings of the Ike Dike. The Ike Dike, named after Hurricane Ike, is the nickname for a $57 billion water development infrastructure project called the Texas Coastal Barrier Project. Expanding upon the existing Galveston Seawall, the Ike Dike is framed as a means of protection from hurricane-induced storm surge flooding in Galveston Bay and along the petrochemical corridor in the Houston Ship Channel. When completed, it will include a greater than two-mile-long ocean barrier that, when closed, will plug the entrance to Galveston Bay. Critics of the project say that the project won't even protect against the largest storms, that it offers private corporations protections that they should have been mandated to create for themselves, and that it could be highly detrimental to local ecosystems.

 Juxtaposing real-world interviews with corps officers, footage of bureaucratic procedures, and historical narratives of local environmental infrastructure projects with staged civic action and musical performances, IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT untangles the irony at the heart of the Ike Dike project: the industries it is designed to protect are the very industries driving the escalation of superstorms in Texas and around the globe.