knotweed raft on Mashapaug Pond, 2023, photo credit, Maxwell Fertik

Maxwell Fertik works with a globally invasive species to tell a story of local industrial devastation.

(A message to the reader.)

1) There is no such thing as an undisrupted ecosystem.

In America, invasive plants are often considered a hated presence. Gardeners shun them and plant nativists call for an all-out war on them. Make no mistake, they are pesky, persistent and without a doubt a problem. Nonetheless, I challenge you to adopt an alternate perspective. Consider the invasive plant as a post-industrial resource and symbol of abundance within the ruins of American industry. Also a visceral stand-in for colonialism, xenophobia and post-industrial abundance.

Long before the first industrial revolution, humans defied indigenous wisdom and developed an Earth that disregards the way nature moves, an Earth that treats humans as an exception to natural laws and performs for humans the act of submission. Throughout the past two years, I have seen the world through the eyes of Japanese Knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) (虎杖), and deciphered the spread of this non-native species of the Northeast, as a direct product of rapid development and an obvious outcome of human disregard.

2) Every inch of the planet is impacted by industrial development and its chemical legacy has mutated the soil and water.

knotweed field day,2023, photo credit, Arvind Bhallamudi

Specifically, I took an interest in the impact of Gorham Silver Manufacturing on Mashapaug Pond in Providence, Rhode Island as a proxy for the environmental impact of craft industries everywhere in the West. But it doesn’t have to be knotweed and it doesn’t have to be Gorham, these just happened to be my hyperlocal examples. As a response, my friends and I went out into one of the most abandoned relics of twentieth-century industry, an old train tunnel, and spent the day harvesting the knotweed as an endless resource. This was our first Knotweed Field Day.

We did this to promote a value system of abundant over extractive resources and to visualize a post-industrial reality. The vision was to work with my peers and community to thoughtfully and carefully remove this pesky perennial without succumbing to the violent language of invasive biology. In the process, we learned to work with this plant instead of against it and reframe its existence as a displaced species, never meant to grow in the toxic soils of the post-industrial Northeast. Nonetheless, the plant is here and thriving with no plans of leaving any time soon. So armistice, it is.

3) Native to Nagano Prefecture in Japan, knotweed is accustomed to volcanic soils and an ecosystem to keep it in check, namely Miscanthus, a vigorous giant herb, bamboo and Aphalara itadori, a psyllid (bug) that feeds on the stem.

Knotweed was brought to the West as an ornamental for British gardens by Philippe von Siebold in the mid-1800s. It gained popularity for its bamboo-like quality reminiscent of Japanese gardens. England was obsessed with anything “exotic” in this period. But you can probably guess the rest of the story from here. The plant is brought to the United States, either intentionally or not, after it escaped cultivation in Europe. In the 1950s, it was first spotted in New England, 20 years after the plant got the nickname “Hancock’s Curse” for its ability to reduce property value by £100 (about $10,000 today).

4) Meanwhile, Providence, like many other New England cities in the early 1900s, is a booming industrial dynamo.

Morley Field,2023, photo credit, Maxwell Fertik

In 1890, the city housed five of the largest factories in the world and even boasted of having the first industrial mill in America (Slater Mill). However, due to various factors including a devastating hurricane in 1938, most of these industrial giants abandoned ship, leaving their behemoth buildings behind, either to crumble or remain standing as monuments to the past. Today, many of these sites remain standing while others have been demolished. Nonetheless, the soil reflects the immense contamination that lives on long beyond their exit. Gorham Silver was one such example of the group that many local artists and organizers have done lots of work around. But I also chose Gorham because the old site was covered in patches of knotweed. In many ways, this was a collaboration between the contaminated soil, the opportunistic plant and myself. And thus began the playbook++.

Aside) This ++ symbol that appears throughout is a representation of addition and abundance.

5) A playbook++, lays out possible strategies or “plays’’ for making do with what exists around us amid collapse.

Japanese knotweed continues to grow in the most degraded landscapes. It is the central case study and key example of how abundance can be harnessed without exploitation or the assumption of infinite growth. The second to final step of this endeavor was to make knotweed objects at three different scales: a set of silverware, a small table and a raft.

The silverware, made from cast knotweed powder and electroformed with a thin layer of silver, is a direct response to Gorham Silver who dumped toxic solvents and polishing agents into Mashapaug Pond. Silver is not only a symbol of immense wealth but equally, environmental degradation and disrupted ecosystems. The table was a collaborative effort with Sam Aguirre, embodying similar values but proving the strength of knotweed pulp as modelling material.

And lastly, using the bundles of dead knotweed stalks harvested from the pond, the old train tunnel, and other post-industrial sites, I created a raft. The raft can act as a floating remediation island for native wetland species as a way of harnessing this abundant resource and pulling toxins out of the water. It can also act as a life raft in the age of rising sea-levels.

6) Lastly, addressing the xenophobic language around invasive species mentioned earlier, the amorphous element of this project was outreach.

One of my more insightful trips around New England was my trip up to the Maine Invasive Species Network (MISN) conference where they held a workshop on invasive language. I made sure to borrow this tactic and create a worksheet to help my peers reframe the violent and militaristic language used around non-native plants. I was also graciously brought into the BAC (Below and Above Collective) consisting of four artists/designers and one botanist. Together we create floating wetlands made of knotweed pontoons and native plants. We also continued the (one-year) tradition of knotweed field days and received a resounding response this spring as over 20 people joined us to harvest knotweed, fearlessly clipping and bundling for a common cause.

Today, I look at the spot my partner pointed out two years ago and despite the bi-annual bulldozing, a forest of green sprouts hastily appears right on schedule. If nothing else, this project showed me how to work with the abundant material around me and how to share that wisdom with those around me. Regardless of where I exist in the world, I know there will be some form of post-industrial growth to experiment with and carefully deconstruct with my hands. As I mentioned at the end, this resilient plant and this post-industrial city taught me so many stories beyond their thriving nodes. The disrupted landscape is a hostile place, brimming with sharp ruins and feral plants. But within that mess, amid the decay and destruction, exists the seed of radical futures of resilience and belonging.

About Maxwell Fertik

Maxwell Fertik is an artist, designer and educator currently based in Providence, Rhode Island. In his spare time outside of teaching, he makes furniture, he is 1/6th of an artist collective called “Below and Above Collective” and works on top-secret invasive species recon with his partner Erika for their Somerson Sustainability and Innovation Fellowship.

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G35 | recycling | USA | wood