GRANT CITY — A new online art exhibit will archive Hurricane Sandy victims' experiences during the storm and chart Staten Islanders' relationship with water afterwards.
More than three years after Sandy decimated waterfront neighborhoods around the borough, Staten Island Arts will launch the online "Trouble the Water Project," which features nearly 20 hours worth of audio interviews with residents from around the borough.
"The idea was to kind of preserve the stories," said Naomi Sturm, a folklorist for the group.
"People are still dealing with this, it's still very present. The idea is to have this database available to be adding to it and using it as a platform for future."
For the project, Sturm and the group's previous folklorist Christopher Mule recorded stories from nearly 40 Sandy survivors, first responders and people who work on the waterfront to document their experience with the water and the storm.
"These stories will be from a wide sampling of the community, diverse tellers from different experiences," Sturm said.
The group also talked to recent immigrants to the borough from countries like Sri Lanka and Liberia — whose countries have had water-based disasters in the past — and collected their traditional folktales and song, Sturm said.
"It turns out a lot of the new immigrant communities that live on the island also come from a water based environment," she said. "These places have a history of waterfront disasters and they have folk tales that are entrenched."
After spending nearly a year-and-a-half interviewing people, the group then started work on editing the audio and building the website where the stories will live with transcripts of pictures of the neighborhoods after the storm.
Staten Island Arts will also tag similar stories so people can search by a topic and find a common thread in them, Sturm said.
The group plans to launch "Trouble with Water Project" exhibit on its website by the end of the month and will host an opening exhibit on Dec. 13 at Advance Lock and Key, which just finished its complete refurbishing after the storm, Sturm said.
Staten Island Arts will show residents who attend the opening how to use the database when it launches, give out copies of some interviews and give the participants in the project a CD with their stories.
The free "Remembering Our Trouble Waters" launch will be on Sunday, Dec. 13 from 2 to 5 p.m. at Advance Lock and Key, 2050 Hylan Blvd. For more information, visit Staten Island Arts' website.
