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E M P T Y | V E S S E L | P R O J E C T | N E W S # 20 | D E C . 27 . 05

We are still on a holiday hiatus but many things are planned for the new year.

We still need an oil burning boiler though....

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Be it Known

A small band of revelers of dubious background, known associates of gypsies, wildmen and bootleggers, have set about to throw a huge party to raise money for EV in Febuary.

All they need is a space (to hold 1,000 people!). Do you have an old warehouse lying around? Maybe an abandoned factory? Or your grandmother’s four story Victorian?

Let us know, we will pass it on to the right people…

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U P C O M I N G

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ROCK VIDEOS at the Carriage House :: 12 January Live bands, rock videos…fill in the blank.

Fancy-Fancy Dinner :: Coming Soon

WEBSITE LAUNCH

APRIL 2006 ::: GRAND OPENING ::: Empty Vessel Launch Festival

A DAY IN JANUARY ::: Midnight, The First Snow Storm

APRIL 2006 ::: GRAND OPENING ::: Empty Vessel Launch Festival!!

We are accepting proposals for events and collaborations.  Email as@emptyvesselprojectREMOVEANTISPAMMEASURE.org to discuss your wintery watery scheme.

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W H E R E  I S  T H E  B O A T ?

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We are just south of the Carroll Street Bridge over the Gowanus Canal.

To take a look at a bird’s eye view of the boat’s location, check out the http://maps.google.com satellite image at http://tinyurl.com/7eu5q.

For directions by train: http://www.hopstop.com. We are 2 1/2 blocks from the Carroll Street Stop on the F and G trains.

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H I S T O R Y

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Sometimes history slips away from you, inch by inch...

Imagine a wind blowing. Imagine this wind blowing over an open plain, a dry landscape of few trees. This wind moves over the earth with almost nothing to obstruct it until it sweeps over the rusty hull of a small frieghter sunk into the desert. A hundred feet away the tower of a tuboat rises out of the long ago dried mud. And the wind continues past many old ships where the water has slipped out from under them, whips along into a dry, flat horizon in every direction.

Imagine you are in the Aral Sea, a dry basin nestled between Uzbekistan and Khazakstan.

Imagine it is 100 years ago and suddenly you are underwater. You are in one of the largest saltwater lakes in the world.  Above you , on the surface, fishermen from the port community of Aralsk  are catching their dinners, around you is a thriving ecosystem. Then comes the great experiment in Soviet centralized autocracy which diverts the Aral Sea's two main tributories( the Amu Darya and Syr Darya) into cotton irrigation.By the 1960's almost all of the water is now going away from the Sea and the waterlevel is dropping at a rate of 20cm a year. Twenty years go by and that rate rises to 80cm a year.

Imagine watching as the surface above you decends around your shoulders and mighty tankerships are caught unawares, like giants in tarpits. Imagine the water lapping at your shoes, the docks of Aralsk, a stones throw away, rising above the mud. Imagine the dirt, dry under your shoes, and the water, now over the horizon.

Than the wind comes. And the wind blows loose all of the Sea's secrets.

It picks up the salt and blows it along but it also finds the heavy metals of industrialized  pollution and radiation from weapons testing and dumping. The wind whispers lung disease and cancers as it howls through almost ghost towns.  And deep in the heart of this dying Sea the wind finds a dark place, Vozrozhdeniya Island. A biological weapons center, now abandoned and contaminated with Anthrax and other deadly pathogens.

Imagine that it is today and the Sea has lost 80% of it's volume. That it has been actually divided into two lakes, a north and a south. The Southern Aral Sea has been left to it's demise while efforts are underway to stabilize the Northern Aral Sea and reduce it's salinity. Imagine Aralsk, which is now 110km from the water, suffering for need of income and fresh drinking water. Imagine an entire social and ecological system devastated. Imagine the largest environmental disaster in the world.

Above it all the wind continues blowing, the memories of what was and the hopes of what will come. And maybe you can imagine a day when the water will reappear on the horizon, will seep up into our footprints, will quench the parched earth.

In 1994 the countries that surround the Aral signed a deal that appropriated 1% of their budgets to the restoration of the Sea.

Photo:

For maps and graphical data on the Sea: http://www.dfd.dlr.de/app/land/aralsee/

More info on Vozrozhdeniya Island http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9906/21/anthrax.island/

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S H I P ’ S  L O G

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Heat on EV: In our utopia, we will create a pod that runs on garbage - a figurative cultural machine that is fed exclusively on our culture's literal debris. We would like to heat the vessel with waste oil. Our initial experiments have been with appropriating a small oil-burning, water-circulating home heat boiler. We are not sure that we have considered all our options.  We are investigating diesel stoves and other oil-compatible solutions.  We need your (or your neighbor's, your uncle's, that strange guy's who lived in the trailer down the street from your grandpa's farm) stories of waste-oil-burning success or failure. Email pz@emptyvesselprojectREMOVEANTISPAMMEASURE.org. We are hungry for advice.

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For updates on ongoing projects, check out our TWiki at http://log.emptyvesselproject.org. Advice is always appreciated. Don’t be shy. Please post.

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W I S H L I S T

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MATERIALS: We are creating a practice of re-use and salvage. We would like to give your old materials new life. Specifically, we are looking for:

**fire extinguishers

**10 gallon plastic buckets with lids

**toaster oven

**vegetable steamer

**wet/dry vac

**50,000 –100,000 BTU oil-burning boiler OR a diesel stove!!!

**a Franklin stove

**solar panels

**12V batteries

**a transformer 120V to 12/24V

**another small boat (canoe, kayak, motor)

**life rings

**marine paint

**small fans

**beautiful material in bulk to face ceiling (about 12' x 42') - tin would be fantastic

**plywood for skinning the ceiling (about 12'x 42') - 1/2" or 3/4"

**pretty old single-pane windows

**handles, hooks, small cleats

**steel

**aluminum for constructing a gangplank

**railings

**water hose

**plastic 50 gallon barrels

We will haul away any material contributions. Please forward widely. Contact tk@emptyvesselprojectREMOVEANTISPAMMEASURE.org to donate.

MATERIAL DONATIONS: We are partnering with companies that have ecologically friendly materials and getting material contributions to the Empty Vessel Project.

Johns Manville (www.specjm.com) has donated formaldehyde-free insulation.

BuildItGreen^? (www.bignyc.org), a salvaged building materials warehouse in Astoria, has contributed some great slotted floorboards to face the cabin walls. 

Mojo Fine Art Moving has been very generous with their trucks.

Do you know a company that might be interested in showcasing their products on EV? Contact pz@emptyvesselprojectREMOVEANTISPAMMEASURE.org.

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F U N D R A I S I N G

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We are $110 towards our goal of $500. to make the warm water run through our lovely heating loop and radiate warm air through the vessel. Thank you!!!

You can make a financial contribution to the EVP on our website at http://log.emptyvesselproject.org or by clicking here:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=info%40emptyvesselproject%2eorg&item_name=Empty%20Vessel%20Project&no_shipping=0&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8

Thanks to the Madagascar Institute, we have a 501c(3) Non-Profit number we can provide you for your contribution. 

Give to the Empty Vessel Project = save on your taxes.

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We are also looking for sources of official money that will fund the Empty Vessel Project in the longer term as either (a) an arts project (b) an environmental project or (c) a social experiment and decentralized environment for skill shares. We need money for both infrastructure and specific projects. Are you a grant writer? In development? Know someone that is? We need to raise $10-20,000 to get through the winter. Contact pz@emptyvesselprojectREMOVEANTISPAMMEASURE.org.

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H E R O E S

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A history of heroes:

Danny, GDM, Captain Jim, Fictional Company, Ed, Michael, Madagascar Institute, Cindy Vanden Bosch, Dirty Fingers, Porkchop, northguineahills, Front Room Gallery, DJ Olive, Steven, Ed and Brooke, Paris 1968, Corey and the Free Store, Christian, Mike Topper, Alisa Blanter, Jesse Green, Leo Raphaely, Peter Field, Jeff Stark, Stephen, Lee Azzarello, Nathan, ToddP^?, Dan and Elizabeth, Trevor, Brian Spinks, Andy Baker, Shellshag (Jen and Shell), Urban Stitch (Alessandro and William), Paul Ford, Bez, Brian, Alex Lucas, Leah Beeferman, Brent Arnould, The Dave Carter Quartet, Estee Pierce, Alison Prete, Jason Enghert, Rosie Weinberg, Johns Manville, Black Label Bike Club, New York Harbor School, Eric Forman, Gregory Zaslavsky, Leslie Stem, Andres Colapinto, Anney Fresh, Justin Green, BuildItGreen^?, Mojo Fine Art Moving, Dave Sharps, David & Sharon Lefkowitz Hannah Marcus, Ruban, Cameron Hull, Bill Wasik, Alyssa Abeta & Zeb Stewart of Union Pool, Dylan, Arnie at the Puppet Lending Library, Josh Wienstien, Dept. of Transportation Bridge operators,

-- MichaelMcCanne - 24 Jan 2006
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