The Tide and Current Taxi

[uds-billboard name=”tideandcurrent”]

The Tide and Current Taxi

Address: The waterways around New York City
Contact/Email: lorenzmarie@gmail.com
Website: www.tideandcurrenttaxi.org

How is the project operated?
The Tide and Current Taxi is a small rowboat ‘water taxi’ that I operate in the New York Harbor. People email me requesting trips and I schedule them to coincide with the strong tidal currents in the harbor. The boat is powered mostly by the tide but my passengers and I also do a lot of paddling. I document each trip on my web journal tideandcurrenttaxi.org.

How long has it been in existence?
2005

What was your motivation?
I wanted to share the unique experience of exploring New York’s waterways, and to link my tide-based navigation to an audiences web-navigation.

Number of organizers/responsible persons of the project.  
1; Marie Lorenz

How are programs funded?
I fund the project myself, but there are very few operating costs.

Number and average duration of exhibitions/events per year.
I usually take between 10-20 people out in the boat every year. I usually make the trips for a few weeks in the summer. About 20 thousand people visit the site every year.

Do you accept proposals/submissions?
I love getting requests for specific trips in The Tide and Current Taxi. I usually have a theme every year for the trips that I want to make, but I am always looking for a good story (someone who wants to visit a particular place for a particular reason).

What is your artistic/curatorial approach?
I believe that the act of floating has an impact on observation. The viewer maintains an awareness of their balance and form as they absorb the details in their surrounding. This kind of observation creates something new out of something familiar. My boat projects are an attempt to un-know the metropolis by continually exploring it.

What’s working? What’s not working?
I need a better way of scheduling passengers, and I would love to be able to work on the web-site a little to make it easier to search for specific things.

What kind of role do you hope to play in your local art scene or community?
This is a hard one – I guess my goals change throughout the project.

What idea are you most excited about for the future?
I am excited about operating the Tide and Current Taxi for as long as I am physically able. I think it will be amazing to look at images from my logs over the decades and see how the coast of NYC has changed, see how the project has changed, how I have changed, and how my passengers change.

All images courtesy of Marie Lorenz.