ice the installation is the title for a proposed space-specific
temporary installation for the Russell Hill Rogers Gallery
on the Navarro Campus of the Southwest School of Art & Craft
in San Antonio, Texas.
A full-body/full-room installation, the space of the gallery
will be transformed, as viewed from below, into a floating
seascape of ice-like materials extending across the space
overhead. The installation, in its entirety, will be independently
suspended from a mechanism adapted specifically to the pre-existing
hangers left over from the previous Sears life of the space.
The spectator will be invited to enter under and become
a part of ice, perambulating an ethereal world beneath a gel-and
light activated 10' waterline. The light will take its colors
from the sun; rose, reddish yellows, and from the clouds and
water. Ice bridges, cracks, milk-blue pools and veins, weathered
faces fracture and tilt, hanging beneath the waterline, crossing
at odd angles and slanting skyward.
Overhead, motion activated lights, motors, sound and performance
by collaborator Joanne Brigham will, in turn, activate the
structures and the nutrient-rich air above in response to
this biological/technological interface.
Dwayne Bohuslav |
ice the performance
is a guided adventure through the seemingly barren and frozen
world, the resultant journey of my personal search to find our
(human) place in biology. A liberating space, where all living
things are equal, no hierarchy remains. Where we are no longer
limited by our self-imposed belief systems. The Aeolian Zone
is a wind borne biome that exists in extremely high altitude.
Life, here, must show continuous adaptations to freezing and
thawing within each day.
This glaciated tundra will be our mobile home. It's a tenuous
life for the no longer privileged. Its Darwin fast-forwarded
as we struggle to survive. The performance will move pensively
through, under, over and along the ice-like and epiphytic
installation by collaborator Dwayne Bohuslav, drawing out
its qualities and life while discovering parallel worlds of
microscopic plants, annelid worms, fairy shrimp and more.
Haunting and beautiful sounds of the tundra accompany the
movement with poetic visits to science, physics, history,
geography, biology and art in this attempt to liberate our
minds from who we have been and ask "What are we?" and "Where
do we belong?"
Joanne Brigham |
I wrote words down for the tints - the grays
of doves and pearls, of smoke. I isolated, in my binoculars,
the high rampart of a mesa-like berg sheared off like a damp
wall of talc. Another rounded off smoothly , like a human forehead
against the sky, and was pocked and lined, the pattern of a
sperm whale's lacerated tun. Floating, orographic landscapes
- sections broken out of a mountain range: snow-covered ridges,
cirque valleys, sharp peaks. The steep walls often fell sheer
to sea, like granite pitches, their surfaces faceted like raw
jade, or coarser, like abraded obsidian.
"Ice and Light", p. 207 ARCTIC DREAMS Barry Lopez
ice Revised, Evolving
ice the installation
By operating primary forces against each other, ice builds
a constantly shifting topology overhead. Pulling and pushing.
Twisting and turning. There is a theater of subtle forces
of water, ice and air from concrete floor to ceiling, where
pure equations of matter can be contemplated.
Adaptive all-thread/industrial spring hardware suspended
from the cosmology of pre-existing ceiling locations. 96
yards of 66" wide 40m PVC curtain is painstakingly
suspended at a 10' datum over 1,500 sq. ft. of the gallery
space. Point-loaded blocks of ice @ selected suspension
points load the industrial springs. The amber and clear
PVC will deform/twist/turn/stretch without losing tensile
strength to shape the understory projected for ice. Rose/reddish
yellow clouds and water/mild-blue pools and veins of urethane
resin is poured/painted into the floating icescape. ice
melts and is run into the pre-existing floor drains as the
shapes shift over its months of existence, never fixed or
pre-determined, in flux, like life and ice.
Audio transducers and soundscape, projections and movement.
Dwayne Bohuslav |
For the past 5,000 years, in an attempt to
live a more predictable and safe existence, Western Civilization
has acted with hubris in regard to this planet. We look to nature
for guidance in our search for solutions and understanding.
ice the performance: revised/revisioning/revising..........evolving
As we continue with our work toward a realization date
of November 2006 and in an attempt to update and communicate
to you the performative life of ice as it morphs, molds
and more clearly describes and reveals its multiple cells/selves
to me, I would like to add the following:
ice begins....................as a rigid chunk of geological
time.......................ticking...................................................
A slow, suspended storyteller of multiple perspectives.
Disparate, simultaneous and complex conditions
Co-existing
Allowed
Collapsing through to find gravity describing the
surface,
A shape-shifting model trying on lives to fluidity
Less quantitative, less sight,
Way finding from scent or sound, a gentle, non-probing
Scale traveler........................................lost...........
floating
The script, sound installation and projections are being
developed from my research into non-western concepts of
spatiality, remote sensory mapping, physics, Dwayne Bohuslav's
installation conceptualization and an urgency on my part
to find place/space for a less destructive, more empathic
existence. The installation acts as a fluid model for constantly
changing perspectives and intersects with micro/macro/parallel/virtual
and imaginary worlds. The research was aided by a NEH Institute
grant to study at the Hermann Smith Center for Cartographic
Studies, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, summer 2004.
Joanne Brigham |
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