Anthony Acciavatti, “Groundwater Earth”

e-flux Architecture presents “Groundwater Earth,” a lecture by Anthony Acciavatti at e-flux on Tuesday, April 9 at 7pm.

“Groundwater Earth” tells the hidden history of the largest distributed mass of freshwater on the planet. The fruits of groundwater are all around us: Nearly half the global population drinks it and over half of all crops are irrigated with it. Groundwater extraction technologies are as significant to farms and cities as the elevator was to the early twentieth-century American metropolis. This talk traces the preposterous, practical, and perilous experiments with groundwater. It focuses on the Indo-Gangetic plains and Sonoran Desert—two major sites of experimentation with groundwater extraction since the nineteenth century. Combining over a decade of fieldwork in the Americas and Asia, with archival research undertaken in three continents and vast amounts of data collected using remote sensing satellites, “Groundwater Earth” examines the scales and slow-motion impacts of groundwater extraction on the tilt of the earth to the shape of cities and farms.

“Groundwater Earth” is presented as part of e-flux Architecture Lectures, a monthly series inviting researchers and practitioners to discuss timely issues in contemporary architecture, theory, culture, and technology.

For more information, contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.

Accessibility                    
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.         
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator that leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.                  
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the event space and this bathroom.