canal-locks
The Untracked Route
A fiberglass dinghy detaches from the pier in Waterford, New York, just meters from a radio antenna that transmits data on water flow pressure. The movement is slow: a rhythmic, measured stroke that doesn’t seek speed but contact with the stagnant water of a system designed for 19th-century commercial traffic. There is no motorized navigation, nor consistent GPS signals; only a manual map and a sense of direction built up day after day.
The Erie Canal is no longer a commercial route: it lost its logistical function in 1994. Today, the water flows at an average speed of 0.8 km/h, too slow for freight transport, but sufficient for those who want to measure distance not in kilometers, but in pauses, silences, and encounters with the old railway bridges that arch over the traces of another era. The rower’s gesture is no longer a practice of transit: it is a form of active presence in the territory.
The Lock System
At each lock, the barge stops. A hydraulic mechanism raises or lowers water in a tank 18 meters long and 5.4 meters wide, with a maximum capacity of 200 tons of water per cycle. There are 35 locks, distributed along a stretch of 350 km, each of which takes between 18 and 45 minutes to pass through.
This rhythm is not random: the system works like a time machine. Each lock represents a point of suspension, a moment when the speed of the journey is canceled out and attention shifts from movement to matter. The barge does not pass through the lock; it becomes part of it. The water that enters or exits has the specific weight of a decision, and the sound of the metal closing is a signal of closure, not of opening.
Resistance as a Gesture
The journey of Z Behl and Kim Moloney is not a casual outing. It’s a mapping of unofficial routes: paths that the canal has never officially declared, but whose physical structure makes possible. The act of paddling becomes an act of recognition, because only those who move slowly can see the cracks in the wall of normality.
Navigating by paddle is not an aesthetic choice; it’s a practice of structural resistance. While the modern waterway system is managed by algorithms that optimize commercial flows, the canoe moves within an area of controlled disorder—where speed doesn’t matter, but time does. The invisible manufacturing of passage is here: each stroke builds a new cartography, not of places, but of possibilities.
The tension between memory and obsolescence
The Erie Canal has outlived its period of economic utility. The flow of goods has been replaced by another form of value: that of physical persistence. The structures have not been destroyed; they have been abandoned, but not erased. Each lock retains its mechanical function, each gate its weight.
This obsolescence is not a failure: it is a condition of potential. The system can be reactivated without new constructions; simply recognize that its material — concrete, metal, water — has already withstood the test of time. Behl and Moloney’s art does not seek to restore: it seeks to see what has been rendered invisible by the logic of productivity.
Photo by Quilia on Unsplash
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