ANNA LEHR MUESER
My current project is about the consequences of infrastructure, over time. Titled “Land After Technology: Collective Memory and the New York City Water Supply”, this project examines the intersections of collective memory, placemaking practices, and watershed development and management in the rural region which supplies nearly all of New York City’s drinking water. Through the history of New York City’s development and regulation of an expanding watershed in the Catskill Mountains, I interrogate how people whose lives and environments have been directly shaped by infrastructural systems relate to concepts of heritage and belonging, relationships between individuals, small communities, and the state, and the connections between rural and urban spaces.