The River Cube Project: An Introduction

The River Cube Project is an inquiry-driven quest to co-create a response to the question "What is a River?" In May 2019, Matt Keene and Christina Lorena Weisner will drift, paddle, pedal and sail The River Cube (a sculpture) 275 miles from the source of the Neuse River in North Carolina to the Atlantic Ocean.

The nearly two-million-year-old Neuse River is one of the oldest in what is now known as the United States and stretches some 275 miles across the state of North Carolina. Its waters traverse ancient rift basins created during the break-up of the supercontinent Pangea and accumulate behind dams of the modern epoch before flowing onward to the global ocean.

On about May 11th 2019, after appearances on The State of Things on North Carolina Public Radio, at the Gregg Museum of Art and Design, and at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Matt Keene and Christina Lorena Weisner will take the River Cube sculpture to its launch site: the headwaters of the Eno River, the source of the Neuse River. Over the course of approximately four weeks, they will drift, paddle, pedal and sail the River Cube 275 miles from the source of the Neuse River to the Atlantic Ocean.

Rivers have an intrinsic and instrumental capacity to remember and tell stories; to connect the past, the present and the future. The River Cube Project will stop in the towns and wilderness areas along the Neuse River to both join and create dialogue about the river and the relationships it creates and hosts. Bringing together artists, scientists, residents and communities living in the Neuse River watershed, the Project explores the Neuse River as a unique environment created and influenced by relationships between nature, people, and technology. The Project is designed as a catalyst for the creation of a context-specific Collection of information and knowledge, art and science that synthesizes and reflects – presents a sampling of – the Neuse River’s diversity and complexity.

Once The River Cube Project crosses through the Ocracoke Inlet in North Carolina, the journey will be complete. The River Cube Project will curate the Collection gathered while traveling along the Neuse River as an immersive art-science exhibition in late 2020 that represents a co-created response to the question “What is a River?”