ARCHIVE 02

WET LAND IS
A “QUEER” LAND?

Lane Wang

Research Before Design
2024 Fall
Advanced V Studio: Wet Land
Professor: Michael Wang

Advanced Architectural Design
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Columbia University

Archive
© 2025 Images, Archives, Models & Design

In a city structured by conformity to explicit societal status and mainstream preferences, those born without these preferred — yet inherently biased — conditions are excluded from the dominant discourse. Land is treated much like people: manipulated and repurposed, whether by draining wetlands for agriculture or by turning them into sites for urbanization. As spaces that resist structure, today’s wetlands — the city’s wet corners — become refuge for those forced to the margins, the people who flee, suffer discrimination, and yet collectively contribute to the city’s grandness alongside its most vulnerable.

This research project experiments with curating the queer identity that wetlands originally embodied, grounded in historical and symbolic analysis. It forms the basis for the curator’s artistic response to New York — a place where he has been both inspired, questioned and forged, a place that used to be a wetland.

The Image From a Wetland to a Nightclub

“WETLANDS PRESERVED”
...Relix Documentary

A Nightclub of Rock Underground
A Gathering Place of Environmental Activists.

M. LISPENARD
...Lispenard’s Meadow, Manhattan, Sergey Kadinsky, 2017

TWO “WETLANDS” OVERLAPPED
Lane Wang, 2024 Fall

“WETLANDS PRESERVED” Interiors
Lane Wang, 2024 Fall
Documentary Screenshots
...Relix Documentary

LISPENARD’S MEADOW
...Lispenard’s Meadow, Manhattan, Sergey Kadinsky, 2017

Name taken from either Anthony Lispenard (1640-1696) or grandson Leonard Lispenard (1714-1790). Anthony, a “REFUGEE” from 17th Century France.

Lispenard, a French Huguenot family that settled in New York after “FLEEING” from religious persecution.

A Place for a White Refugee.

A VIVID EXAMPLE OF “GENTRIFICATION”

“DAYLIFE CONQUER ON NIGHTLIFE”
“NORMALITY CONQUER ON ABNORMALITY”

“MASCULINITY CONQUER ON MARGINALITY”

“161 Hudson St, Tribeca” ...Apartments.com

A VIVID EXAMPLE OF “URBANIZATION”

“CONCRETE CONQUER ON SWAMP”
“GRID CONQUER ON NATURED TEXTURE”

“MASCULINITY CONQUER ON MARGINILITY”

The 1894 Map
...Lispenard’s Meadow, Manhattan, Sergey Kadinsky, 2017

MONSTROUSLY AESTHETIC
Wetlands, Marginalized Monster
Wetland literature is a minor literature written in a major language that disrupts from within majority languages and mainstream anti-paludal culture.

Swamp Water (1941), Film
(Jean Renoir; featuring Dana Andrews, Anne Baxter, and Ward Bond) — set in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia; a story of fugitives, suspicion, and survival.

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Film
(Jack Arnold) — Scientists encounter a prehistoric creature while exploring the Amazon River’s black lagoon, igniting a battle for survival.

Black Water (1992), Novel
(Joyce Carol Oates) — A young woman’s fate unravels after a car accident with a powerful senator, reflecting tragedy, guilt, and betrayal.

*leigh bowery
monstrously aesthetics
“Conceptual, flamboyant, outlandish, and sometimes controversial.”

...Leigh Bowery: Glitter, Shit, and the Performance of Decadence, Sofia Vranou, 5 February 2024

...LEIGH BOWERY ID / I-D Magazine #48 JUNE 1988 BOY GEORGE RARE COLLECTIBLE ISSUE

...Leigh Bowery, ph. Nick Knight

DISCRIMINATEDWetlands, Cartographic Blank
Wetlands in American histories stood as a refuge — ecological, political, and geographical — for enslaved African Americans, a place of resistance amid the violence of white colonization.

Sketch map of the Great Dismal Swamp, 1807

...Anonymous Sketch Map of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia

Apart from the “unknownness” depicted by the black area, this uncertainty extends beyond the paper itself through noticeable rough strokes, signaling warning and danger that undermine the masculinity of rationality, the grid, and tangibility.
The sketch is accompanied by a page of text, 'Questions and answers on the Swamp. Answers to Col. Hamilton's questions respecting the Great Dismal Swamp', concerning its length and breadth, the growth of timber, extent of cultivation, canal cutting, seasonal factors and whether any animals are peculiar to the Swamp.

HIDDEN
Wetlands, Maroons
The Great Dismal Swamp — spans roughly Virginia’s Cities of Suffolk and Chesapeake and North Carolina’s Gates and Camden counties — stood as a refuge — ecological, political, and geographical — for enslaved African Americans, a place of resistance amid the violence of white colonization.

Osman, a long-term resident of the Great Dismal Swamp, 1856

...September 1856 edition of Harper's New Monthly Magazine

Living in a Hollow Tree, in William Still's The Underground Railroad, 1872
...More Than a Runaway: Maroons in Louisiana

The Lacustrine Village of Saint Malo, Louisiana
March 31, 1883, Harper’s Weekly Journal of Civilization, drawn by Charles Graman from sketches by J. O. Davidson
“It is the first written record known of the Filipino shrimp and fishing platform in Lake Borgne in St. Bernard near New Orleans. The article says the village had been in an existence for more than 50 years making it...
...the earliest Filipino American settlement in the United States and possibly the first Asian American settlement in the United States.”

...From Manila to the Marigny: How Philippine pioneers left a mark at the ‘end of world’ in New Orleans by Matthew Hinton, October 23, 2019

Bits of Saint Malo Scenery, 1883, drawn by Charles Graman from sketches by J. O. Davidson

...From Manila to the Marigny: How Philippine pioneers left a mark at the ‘end of world’ in New Orleans by Matthew Hinton, October 23, 2019

REFLECTIVE
Wet Land, Boundaries was Originally Blurred
...Wetland Cultures - Rod Giblett
When people today reflect on the cancellation — the white modification of wetlands stemming from initial ignorance and systematic racism — fluidity begins to speak for itself in the juxtaposition of artworks depicting Lake Wendouree in Australia across two different eras. While Marlene Gilson’s 2016 painting on the right shows a bustling waterfront scene, Thomas Thompson’s 1875 view on the left omits the Aboriginal refuge that once existed there. This explicit boundary between water and land serves as a historical record, a silent narrative of genocide, segregation, and violence.

Comparison Analysis, Diagram 1
Lane Wang, 2024 Fall

...ArtLink: Exploring where we live

Comparison Analysis, Diagram 2
Lane Wang, 2024 Fall

...ArtLink: Exploring where we live

*Sydney, Australia, 1960s
discriminated, hidden, reflective

Yes, Sydney, Australia in the 1960s Was the Drag Capital of the World

Amid Deep-Rooted Homophobia, Titillating and Fantastically Glamorous Shows Were Annual Events

...Craig Seligman, March 3, 2023

ANTI-MASCULINE
Wetlands, Conquested
“Dredging, draining and reclaiming wetlands is a quintessentially masculinist thing to do. It was certainly the kind of war the fascist Benito Mussolini liked to fight and win in Italy with the Pontine Marshes in the 1930s. Saddam Hussein did likewise with the marshlands of southern Iraq in the 1990s.”

Wetland Cultures - Rod Giblett

Benito Mussolini taking part in the thresh in Littoria

The Indian migrants lured into forced labor on Mussolini’s farmland - Isobel Cockerell, Mar 16, 2023

The Floating Basket Homes of Iraq: A Paradise Almost Lost to Saddam

Iraq’s vast marshes, reborn after Saddam, are in peril again

SUPPRESSED
Wetlands, Wet Land, Wet to Land
Several renowned big cosmopolitans were originally wetlands, such as New York, Chicago, Sydney, Melbourne. Having underpinned the waterways for economic trade that still serves as the basis of cities of Capitalism, wetlands, however, were dismantled — dredged, drained and reclaimed — together with species, ecological systems that had come along. In the world where the skyscraper erects the ideology of men’s conquest on nature, Wetland, home to life that belongs to either one of land and ground, or both, generates the notion of “the unclassified”, the “gender-fluid”, the “anti-masculine”.

...Views: Chicago in 1820 (with) Bird's-eye View of Chicago in 1871-before the Fire, by McDonald, R.H., 1872

...Mannahatta Project, The Wekilia Project, Eric W. Sanderson

Flood events were a regular occurrence in Melbourne throughout the 19th century. (State Library of Victoria)

...We shouldn't be surprised that Melbourne's inner west floods. It's always been a swamp, Tim Callanan, Jan 6, 2023

Aboriginal people fishing, as depicted by French explorers in 1800 (ALMFA, SLT), Tasmania, Australia

...Aboriginal Life Pre-Invasion

*William Dorsey Swann, 1903
anti-masculine, suppressed

William Dorsey Swann, Post Card, 1903

No known photographs of Swann survive. This 1903 postcard depicts two Black actors, one of whom is dressed in drag, performing a cakewalk in Paris.

...The First Self-Proclaimed Drag Queen Was a Formerly Enslaved Man, Cari Shane, June 9, 2023

SELF-ENTERTAININGWet Land, Moist Alcohol Bar
Rooted in the wet, unexposed-to-sunlight ground, wedged between the structural supports and tubes, these basements were spaces for “the need-to-be-hidden”, in spite of being the groundwork upon which the “grandness” of a skyscraper itself or even a society, rested. Some of these corners, though underprivileged in the masculine discourse, however served as refuge-like dive bars for spiritual escape from the selves men had created and taken pride in. From the peeling wallpaper to the whiskey keg that served as a seat, the moist ambience channeled the hedonistic to the underprivileged in the damp little basement, the site of refuge, release and transformation.

A Black-and-Tan Dive in “Africa.”, Riis, Jacob A., Circa 1890

An African American man seated on a whiskey keg flanked by two women in a “Black and Tan” dive bar on Broome Street near Wooster Street.

...A Slum City for Slum People: Jacob Riis’ Photos Of New York’s Other Half (1890)

*Boy Bar, 1994
self-entertaining

LuLu, It’s a Mod Mod Mod World, Boy Bar, 15 St. Marks Pl, August 7, 1994

...East Village Nightlife: A Home for Drag and DIY Performance, August 7, 2024 By Hannah Berry

PROTEST
Wet Land, Ghosts/Recurrences
Starting from the “aqua-cide” for people’s ambition to conquer the nature, the city paved over the wetlands, silencing their voice beneath asphalt and ambition. People eventually fail. Wetlands call out through fever and leaks in mourn and rage.

“WETLAND Ghost”
Lane Wang, 2024 Fall
Referencing...
...Hidden Waters of New York City, Sergey Kadinsky

RIOT
Wet Land, Floods
James Cameron’s Avatar premiered in 2009 as he claimed inspirations from world’s growing awareness of deforestation, climate change, etc., even though New York’s Albany’s Greatest Flood had delivered the new “wetland” to people in 1913. We stepped into the vivid drowned world in movie theaters without realizing the announcement of its approach almost a century ago. Beginning with photographs channeling the record and with colors, aquatic riot targeting lands brought the possibility into our eyes while peel the imaginary crust off the core of disasters.

Albany's Greatest Flood - Lower Broadway - March 28, 1913

...The Albany Great Flood of March 1913 and How It Changed the World, Friends of Albany History, March 27, 2017

Broadway, Looking North from State St., During 1913 Spring Flood Albany, N. Y

...The Albany Great Flood of March 1913 and How It Changed the World, Friends of Albany History, March 27, 2017

Men form a line and pass cinder blocks from a truck to a storefront on Poyntz Avenue during the flood in July of 1951.

It was one of the worst floods in Manhattan’s history. The photo looks east toward the place Manhattan Town Center mall now sits. Mercury file photo.

...Remembrance; A look back at the 1951 flood 70 years later, Staff Reports, July 13, 2021

Residents ride an air boat through flooded streets in Manhattan in summer 1993.

...Hell and high water|Looking back on '93 flood, July 22, 2018

...NEW YORK: This Is What Your Flooded Subway System Looked Like After Hurricane Sandy, By Joe Weisenthal, Oct 31, 2012

Proposed updated flood zone map, 2013

...NYC Updated Flood Zone Maps

Sea level rise and storm surge map of NYC create a detailed picture of community resources and areas exposed or vulnerable to future inundation.

...How Can NYC Get to Zero Waste?

A general view of a flooded street in Williamsburg, New York, United States on September 29, 2023. Fatih Aktas | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

...New York ’s floods weren’t a one-off — here’s how the city is preparing for the future, Rebecca Ricciotto, Oct 4, 2023

*Stone-Wall, Before and After
protest, riot

Courtesy of Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, San Francisco, 1966

Before Stonewall: Remembering the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, By Lynn Yaeger, August 19, 2016

Crowds near the Stonewall Inn several days after the raid on June 29, 1969. Larry Morris

The commissioner, James O’Neill, said he was sorry on behalf of the New York Police Department for officers’ actions during a seminal 1969 clash outside a gay bar.

Stonewall Riot Apology: Police Actions Were ‘Wrong,’ Commissioner Admits, By Michael Gold and Derek M. Norman, June 6, 2019

ETERNAL OPTIMISM
Wet Land, Aqua & Land
People still cannot live underwater, yet we worship Poseidon, the mythical deity who reigns within it. That dream has been rendered visible ever since rendering technology was invented — and it was further delivered into our homes when aquarium tanks became popular. No matter how the masses perceive the growing intrusions of water, for better or for worse, these liquid worlds have secured a place in our lives — especially in entertainment — as imaginary relationships with water are envisioned, interpreted, and commercialized to us on lands.

...High Art, Low Tide, 2004, Uploaded by “We Accept You One of Us” on Vimeo

Starring Julie Atlas Muz at the Coral Room, legendary NYC nightclub which boasted a 10,000-gallon saltwater tank with live fish from 2001 to 2004.

Directed by Matthew Kalman.

High Art, Low Tide, 2004, Uploaded by “We Accept You One of Us” on Vimeo

Screenshot

Directed by Matthew Kalman.

High Art, Low Tide, 2004, Uploaded by “We Accept You One of Us” on Vimeo

Screenshot

Directed by Matthew Kalman.

Marine Aquarium Screensaver 3

...Marine Aquarium, Serene Screen

Marine Aquarium 3 Blue Background, YouTube Video

...Marine Aquarium 3 Blue Background (4K)

The Aquatic Life, in movie Abyss, 1989

...The Abyss, Tuesday, August 20, 2019, IFC Center

Love Profusion, Madonna, 2003

Directed by Luc Besson and Shot in September 2003, at Warner Bros.

Love Profusion, Madonna, 2003, Screenshot

Directed by Luc Besson and Shot in September 2003, at Warner Bros.

Love Profusion, Madonna, 2003, Screenshot

Directed by Luc Besson and Shot in September 2003, at Warner Bros.

*Over the Rainbow
Judy Garland, 1939
eternally optimistic

PRIDE
Wet Land, Art Celebration

In the Wet-like
— NYC’s Nightlife Ecstasy Reimagined after Floods

Individual Studio Design
2024 Fall
Advanced V Studio: Wet Land
Professor: Michael Wang

Advanced Architectural Design
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Columbia University

Design
©2025 Images, Archives, Models & DESIGN

Mattress Rave
Scale 1
Image 06
© 2025 Images, Archives, Models & Design

...Explore More

Let’s get soakin’ wet
Scale 2
Image 07
© 2025 Images, Archives, Models & Design

...Explore More

City Games
Scale 3
Image 08
© 2025 Images, Archives, Models & Design

...Explore More

NOTICE

Non-commercial, transformative work created for personal study and artistic exploration. All referenced content remains the intellectual property of their respective owners.

NO REPRODUCTION, COMMERCIAL USE, OR MODIFICATION ALLOWED WITHOUT PERMISSION. Non-commercial sharing is allowed with credit.

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