Environmental Storytelling and VR Symposium at Penn
I’m delighted to be speaking at the upcoming Environmental Storytelling and Virtual Reality tw0-day symposium in the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities on November 22nd. There should be some great conversations and I’m looking forward to learning more about what goes on in Environmental Humanities at Penn in general. I”ll be talking about Oyster City, the AR game/walking tour I made with Meredith Drum using original software developed by Phoenix Toews. Our project came out of our interest in getting people to interact with actual places and in knowledge and experience that is situated. We went for mixed reality using geolocation—in this case on Governors Island in NYC—rather than something virtual and fully immersive.
At least one VR experience I am looking forward to is Lost City of Mer, created by Liz Canner and team, a beautiful dive underwater which includes getting to build a colorful coral reef.
Queer Paranormal (an exhibition concerning Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House)
Queer Paranormal (an exhibition concerning Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House), a project I co-curated with the curatorial collective Two Chairs and Anne Thompson, Director of the Usdan Gallery at Bennington opens October 31st!
Photo: Peggy Ahwesh, still image from “Nocturne” (1998)
Queer Paranormal (an exhibition concerning Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House)
Curated by Jillian Brodie, Cindy Smith and Rachel Stevens of Two Chairs; and Anne Thompson, director of Usdan Gallery, with special thanks to Two Chairs collective members Yinan Cheng, E.H. Dalton, Tony Do and George Wichelns
October 29-December 7, 2019
Halloween Opening Party | October 31, 6:00 pm
Screening of The Haunting | October 31, 8:00 pm
Lecture by Patricia White | November 5, 7:00 pm
Artist Talk and Screening | November 19, 7:00 pm
Participating Artists
Peggy Ahwesh, APRIORI (techno-botanical coven), Anna Campbell, Tony Do, Lana Lin, Susan MacWilliam, Senem Pirler, Macon Reed, Zoe Walsh, and Sasha Wortzel.
Queer Paranormal (an exhibition concerning Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House) presents a range of artistic practices “haunted” by historical, political, and sexual difference. Taking Jackson’s gothic horror classic and its 1963 film version as jumping-off points, the exhibition identifies queerness in themes including witchcraft, the uncanny, the stranger, and the haunted house as undiscovered country and object of desire. Site-specifically located in North Bennington, where Jackson wrote The Haunting of Hill House, Queer Paranormal installs artworks in locations across the Bennington campus, including the Jennings music building—a former mansion believed to be haunted and said to have partly influenced Jackson’s portrait of Hill House. Works in mediums including painting, sculpture, film, video, and sound are spectral in their subject matter and occasionally positioned to otherworldly effect, such as pieces by Senem Pirler and Sasha Wortzel that perform sonic hauntings of everyday spaces.
…more info on the Queer Paranormal PRESS RELEASE
Creative Ecologies and Decolonial Futures
Wow, what a transformative residency. From learning about the work of all the artist, curator and theorist/researcher participants, to spending quality time in San Cristóbal de las Casas and other parts of Chiapas, México, to visits to the Muy Gallery (dedicated to Mayan and Zoque art), a Zapatista Caracol and the El Paraiso collective at the coast, every experience was rich and full of learning.
Thanks so much to Natalia Arcos, Alessandro Zagato of CASA GIAP (Grupo de Investigacion en Arte y Politica), TJ Demos, presenters and all the participants for the conversations, dancing, comradeship and inspiration.
Puffin Foundation grant
So honored to receive funding from the Puffin Foundation for the research and film project I am working on. It the first grant we applied for! The working title is Place of the Big River (Kaniatarowanénhne) or On the Rough Waters (Kahnewake) and the project explores ecological, infrastructural and territorial entanglement at the St. Lawrence River. Artist and filmmaker Pawel Wojtasik is a primary collaborator and cinematographer. We still have way to go with funding, but this is an auspicious start. Thank you Puffin Foundation!
Listening to Dutch Kills – Chance Ecologies sound walk
I am excited about this project in my neighborhood of Long Island City and to be a participating artist, animating the presence of oysters in Dutch Kills and in the estuary at large. Listening to Dutch Kills is a new public art project created by Chance Ecologies. This project is an immersive audio walk that guides participants around the waters of the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek. The walk was commissioned by the SWIM Coalition, and curated by Catherine Grau, Sarah Nelson Wright and Nathan Kensinger, and includes new audio works by Nate Dorr, Edrex Fontanilla, Rachel Stevens, and Moira Williams. Please join us at the launch event on Saturday, June 29th!
More details on the walk and the SWIM Coalition can be seen here: https://www.swimmablenyc.org/dutch-kills-public-art-project/
And please RSVP for the launch event here, which includes an artists talk and picnic:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/getting-to-zero-cso-in-dutch-k…
Here is the view you will be facing during the oyster segment.
