On a beautifully warm day in November, Anna Tsouhlarakis met me at the end of Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint.
With nowhere else to be until later that night, we floated and let the wind push us far up into the creek.
We heard cheering and music from the bank and realized the marathon was crossing the Pulaski Bridge.
We caught up on life and projects.
I couldn’t believe our luck all day; the flowing tide and following wind, the easy sunlight, and the extra time.
We watched as high-rise apartment buildings gave way to factories and infrastructure.
Anna wanted to float between the recycling barges, and we did; there were more metal piles than I have ever seen, prices must be good for crushed and rusting steel.
Anna fished a card from the creek, a video tape rental membership? in 2024?
It looked newer than it should have been, making me think that lamination might be more archival than I ever knew,
or maybe this membership refers to something else entirely.
I tried to remember the way this part of the city looked when we both moved to New York after graduate school,
but I barely remember how it looked a few years ago.
When huge things change it’s hard to picture what was here.
I guess this is not so different—just a view behind everything, reflecting nowhere.
“Now you’re like a real explorer,” Anna said, “with a Native woman guide at the front of your boat.”
I fumbled around with the joke, trying to draw out something funny, but no words seemed quite right.
That’s just like Anna’s sense of humor—keeping me a little off balance.
She currently has a piece up at Banker’s Anchor in Greenpoint that I feel might do the same thing to the whole neighborhood.
Like this one in Columbus, Ohio from last year, some of her artworks are poignant snippets of poetry.
(image: Anna Tsouhlarakis, The Native Guide Project:STL, for the St. Louis Counterpublic Triennial in 2023, Photo Chris Bauer)
but I sort of like the brutal ones best.
(image: ‘The Native Guide Project: Columbus’ by Anna Tsouhlarakis, in Columbus Ohio for Wexner Center for the Arts)
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