It did surprise! People go to the museum or gallery expecting to find objects that are intriguing or different, but not in a shoe or book store. It has nothing obvious to do with the purpose of the business, so why is it there? It surprises them, grabs their attention long enough to prompt further inquiry, and, we hope, some change of perspective, as the observer becomes aware by reading the palm card hanging with the plants that these little mangrove shoots can only survive in an urban setting if human beings care for them.

Whether any long-term positive effects on viewers ensued from these surprise encounters is unknown. Financial and other limitations did not allow for evaluation. Cortada noted:

No, we can’t prove that seeing the propagules in unlikely places had the effect we wanted. [But] if you consider how many people visited Lincoln Road over the six years we did the project there, we could estimate that about 200,000 people were exposed to the project. I am satisfied with that.

Figure 5: Passersby are intrigued by mangrove propagule installation. 2007. Photo: Xavier Cortada

The Reclamation Project’s science 
A crucial aspect of effective ecological art is its firm basis in science. An ecological art work must integrate scientific analyses of environmental degradation in order to be either neutral or ameliorative in its effect on the natural environment in which it is sited. Ecological art includes a wide range of practices, which all seek to make “visible” the “invisible” processes and causes of degradation. The Reclamation Project incorporates important aspects of the best science about restoration of mangrove stands, has ameliorative effects, and educates diverse and numerous audiences. Nevertheless, the artist points out:

The Reclamation Project was always pro-science. But I never conceived of it as a science project. It was always art in the service of science. My intention was always to help people vote the way scientists think. My sense was they had to be immersed in something so ubiquitous that it had become a backdrop, something familiar, but not understood. 

The “something so ubiquitous” was the mangrove: familiar to the point of invisibility, and yet critical to the protection of Florida land. In 2006, the same year the Reclamation Project began, Al Gore released his documentary Inconvenient Truth across the country. Cortada’s approach differed from Gore’s in Inconvenient Truth. The Reclamation Project was not a response to climate disruption scientific discourse, but, rather, to species loss. Cortada explains:

The Reclamation Project took form at a time when skyscrapers were popping up everywhere along Miami shorelines. My direct witness of the environmental destruction being done to make this growth happen moved me to action. There is no doubt that [Al Gore’s film] was part of the background as the project formed in my mind. As were the many conversations with scientists on the warming effects they were seeing during my NSF artist residency in Antarctica. As the project matured, we got more deeply into mangroves’ climate-related importance, such as carbon sequestration and storm surge protection. 

Cortada frankly states that, though he has studied and taught biology, he does not consider himself to be a biologist. He sees the Reclamation Project as an art-based mobilization and engagement effort, not a “science project:”

I had been a full time artist for ten years when The Reclamation Project was launched. If my role in the project was anything other than as an artist, it was more as a social scientist, than as a biologist, although I am very comfortable with science and in science milieus. I was more a mobilizer, an engager, an awareness builder, which is totally based in the two decades I spent working with participatory “message” mural projects aiming at community engagement. And, the fact that the Project now resides at the Miami Science Museum, and has required no “science tweaking” at all, speaks, I believe, to how adequate and well integrated the science basis was.

The Reclamation Project’s community engagement
Cortada used a “learn together” approach to community engagement, rather than a more traditional “charrette” process. Cortada explains: 

It was more like how an art studio functions: the artist provides design and methods, and studio assistants carry out the project. Studio assistants often come up with innovative ways to carry out a design. We learn together. I chose this approach not because I didn’t consider, or don’t value the charrette and other approaches to community involvement that elicit community desires as the basis for action–I have done this often throughout my career—but, in The Reclamation Project there was a sense of urgency. People needed to experience firsthand because there really wasn’t experience there to draw on. I didn’t want The Reclamation Project to be only an awareness exercise. I wanted to help advance a culture of caring.

Cortada felt the art studio organization approach was the best way to “help people act” and “advance a culture of caring.” Cortada‘s intuition was that “everyday people” can most quickly arrive at a place of action through direct witness, by “getting their fingernails dirty” and learning together. 

Figure 6: Planting mature propagules. Bear Cut, Key Biscayne, Miami. 2007. Photo: Xavier Cortada

Did it work?
The evidence that the Reclamation Project has started an ongoing “learning together” conversation, where the engaged community and the “teacher” exchange insights and practical ideas, is apparent in its continuing vibrant existence across many community platforms. The project illustrates Wallace Heim’s concept of “slow activism,” where a successful “slow activist” exchange “…works not only in the immediacy of the [first] event,” but in an ongoing way, in “unforeseen” future circumstances.

Xavier Cortada believes the 2006 Reclamation Project model, has become an ongoing “slow activist” exchange that is realizing the process he wanted to see at the beginning: 

I have loved learning about the concept of social sculpture and slow activism. I see The Reclamation Project as a great combination of both of these, even if I created the project without knowing these art genres even existed! The project is still very much alive! The conversation continues, right now! In and out of institutions. Between individuals, between students and teachers, between artists and other art folk. It is Slow Activism!

One can point to the instantly recognizable characteristics of succeeding generations of the Reclamation Project as evidence that the project is “working.” Each new appearance melds established scientific methods, teacher-learning-from-pupil-learning-from teacher pedagogy, and seemingly diametrically opposed aesthetic approaches: the choreographed movement of people and living plants, to Nature’s cadence; the grid installation form; the “slow activism” weaving together unlikely partnerships and social processes; and the mobilization of surprise as an audience engagement tactic.

Cortada feels the project has not suffered from lack of a formal evaluation, and that the Reclamation Project did successfully integrate aesthetics, science and community engagement:

Whether this project has “worked” is a hope of mine, and can’t necessarily be proven. There are much more efficient ways to accomplish reforestation than what The Reclamation Project did. Using seedlings purchased from commercial nurseries, Gary Milano carried out his job to plant mangroves with prison labor. That is both efficient and inexpensive, though, of course, this use of prison labor can be questioned. Nonetheless, the Reclamation Project cannot be said to have been created as an experiment that showed the way to restore mangrove forests either more scientifically or more efficiently. It was created to engage community.

Figure 7: The grid of propagules at the Miami Science Museum. Miami. 2007. Photo: Xavier Cortada

Cortada reported that there were a few small surveys here and there, especially if a grant was involved. But no overall evaluation was ever done on how the project worked, though, as in most of his work, a voluminous archive documenting the process of creation in most of the sites exists on various web-based platforms. Cortada believes the continuing life of the project is proof of its success:

The best outcome, for me, is that the project now happens without me. It is being done on an ongoing basis as a central project of the education program and volunteer involvement at the Science Museum. I think it is also significant that its curriculum is in every public school in the county! In most cases now, the project does not have a high profile as art. It exists primarily as a science education initiative. Nevertheless, I continue to see it as both art and activism, in the service of science and the environment. 

Mary Jo Aagerstoun, Ph. D. is an art historian who studies contemporary art that engages important public issues. She lives in West Palm Beach, FL and wrote “Xavier Cortada’s Reclamation Project” as one of the chapters of her upcoming book on eco-art.