Water Log

AREA C Projects

Rainier Valley Wet Weather Storage

In Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood, not far from the Mount Baker light rail station, a text-based artwork by AREA C Projects surrounds the Rainier Valley Wet Weather Storage, a Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) facility that helps keep sewage and stormwater out of the Duwamish River. Cut-aluminum phrases in English, Spanish, Somali, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Amharic, Lushootseed, Russian, and Chinese encircle the building—all of them related to water. 

Water Log is an artwork built from a wide collection of phrases relating to water, all drawn from the day-to-day chronicles of local Seattle newspapers. By recombining these phrases and adding the word ‘we’ to the beginning of each, the artists built a resonant and open-ended story about the many ways that water moves through the collective life of this city, whether through rivers and weather systems, or storm drains and household taps — a story about how we are all “gathered in the rain.”

Water Log connects with the ways that water shapes moment-to-moment life in Seattle. The artwork’s title picks up on two central ideas.

First, Water Log is an account. In the maritime trades, a log is a book in which important daily data is recorded. This includes all the dry data of barometric readings and compass headings, and also the juicier human details of life onboard a vessel. The artwork’s phrases come from another kind of log: newspapers, which also provide a daily chronicle of life, with all its dry and juicy details. By tracking phrases relating to water in local papers, the artists assembled a third, poetic log, about water. Water Log’s profusion of phrases reflects the masses of data that go into engineering and maintaining clean water every day. At the same time, these phrases speak to the countless and sometimes invisible ways that water touches every aspect of daily life.

The second idea behind Water Log’s title is an experience of saturation. The artwork is also about what it means to be waterlogged: full of water, thoroughly submerged in it, soaked through like a sponge. Water Log’s many phrases and their fluid meanings play with the idea of being thoroughly immersed. As humans our lives are shaped by water, to the extent that our bodies are 60% composed of it. The title, like the artwork itself, explores how life in this region, with its flow-thru of rivers, tides, and weather systems, heightens this relationship and renders its vitality clear.