At the “Midway Meeting” in St. Louis, project partners gathered to explore the temporal and topographical multiplicitices of the metropolitcan region of St. Louis.

Documentation of the Public Symposium, Transect Walk, and Exhibition Opening on March 10, 2019

How are local histories inscribed into the environment? At the “Midway Meeting,” project partners examined the multiple temporalities and social realities present in St. Louis and its adjacent regions.

On March 10, 2019, partners and collaborators of Mississippi. An Anthropocene River came together for a “Midway Meeting” to explore formations of knowledge inscribed within the environment of metropolitan St. Louis. Histories of settlement and resettlement, practices of industrial development, and the centrality of the Mississippi River in all of these processes provided the thematic focal point of this meeting.

The full-day event started with a public symposium at the Cahokia Mounds—a site where the remains of a pre-historic city of the Mississippian civilization can be encountered. The symposium was followed by an immersive Floodplain Transect Walk towards the city of St. Louis under the guidance of local experts, allowing participants to experience landscape transformations on-site. The excursion led to the collectively organized Granite City Art and Design District (G-CADD), which is located right in the middle of St. Louis’ industrial hub and in immediate vicinity to a large, recently revived steel factory. The day ended here with the exhibition opening of Art & Landscape STL, where artists, researchers, and urban planners delved into local attitudes and imaginations of the surrounding region and offered opportunities for community engagement. The presentations and videos below provide an impression of the events.