Breaking Ground Returns

The Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, the nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Boston’s industrial and engineering legacy, announced today that it is again remounting Valery Lyman’s documentary work Breaking Ground: An Immersive Meditation on the Oilfields of North Dakota on the evenings of March 28-29 and April 5-7, 2018, at 7pm.

Drawn from four years of close observation, Valery Lyman exposes the cycles of opportunity and destruction in the Bakken oil shale region. From the oil rigs to the strip clubs, Lyman’s richly textured anthropological account looks unflinchingly at the industry and the American migrant workers at the heart of a global phenomenon. The boomtowns of the past, built on the backs of miners and loggers of the 19^th century, give way to the new boomtowns, filled with the technology and big dreams of the 21^st century. While the infrastructure of extraction has changed, the themes of optimism, hard labor, risk, and loneliness are a constant over more than 200 years of living the American experience.

Photographs from Lyman’s work have have been published by The Guardian, the LA Times, and The Christian Science Monitor in the last few years. The installation will incorporate those images along with audio and video from Lyman’s exploration of North Dakota.

The visual and audio collage planned for the Waterworks Museum will provide a unique, historical setting for exploring this subject. Using the raw surfaces of steel, iron, and brick, Lyman’s images will be projected on to the towering 19^th century engines and archways of the Museum, accompanied by the sounds and voices of the North Dakota communities embedded in an unforgiving, industrial landscape. This 20-channel installation invites the viewer to wander and explore this world for themselves.

This spring, the immersive installation will be on view from 7pm to 10pm over five nights. The event is open to the public. Special event admission is $12 per person and $10 for students, Museum members, and seniors. Tickets will be made available through Eventbrite and at the Waterworks door.