An era where we need more touch…where we are experiencing skin hunger, separated from ourselves and our families. Yet, people don’t know how to touch, aren’t aware of the rules and are thus actively (and necessarily) told NOT to touch. How can we cry out, how can we get what is needed?
A reflection created on a reflection. The old adage of, “Flip the idea on its head…” “Change your perspective, look at it upside down.” All that not-so-silly silly stuff.
Can the edges of the body be a national border? Our skin is a barrier to the multitude of organisms within us, a barrier to the information held within. Our bodies hold the embodied knowledge of our ancestors and our land, carrying that information as we travel.
Your skin softens and begins to expand
Mixing ever so slightly into the air
Cradling your nerves and organs
An expanded cytoplasm
What is a “Tactile Empath” ? - an excerpt from “The Nation of Tactile Empathy” part I research.
Can we view the body as a material? How do we capture and translate the embodied knowledge (the material intelligence) held within the materials around us? Can an inanimate object be “vital” in the same way as the human body/the sentient bodies can? Can it communicate and hold the same governing power? How can we have these discussions with the inanimate materials around us?
An analysis of the artist’s physical needs. What is necessary for peak operation and functioning. This done as part of an exploration in understanding and framing the body as a living machine.
An except from “Embodying Bamboo” isolated images of two bodies acting out the inherent characteristics of bamboo. Specifically “flourish, groves, nameless, noble, and whispering.”
Small natural moments held in the shadows. Larger unnatural moments transmitted through light. Just four bananas on black and the silhouettes of twelve television remotes scavenged from an e-waste facility in red hook on yellow.
A envisioning of New York where the land is water and the water is land.
The Do-Over : Re-colonizing the Earth
UN experts say that our oceans could be fishless by 2048, becoming barren deserts by the year 2050. The Los Angeles drought is “over” but we’ve only got one year of water stored and Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins are 34 million acre-feet below normal level in 2014. We’ve killed off the coral reefs and we’ve leeched the nutrients from our soil. Our conservation techniques and tactics as we know them are failing. What we need now is to celebrate the human resilience and explorer-like wonder of our past and re- discover our world. To re-colonize the Earth and get a do-over.
What if our skyscrapers are the best option for new coral reefs and the Marianas Trench could be our new, Grander-Grand Canyon? We don’t need to build cities upon cities if we build where no one on earth has built before. It would be the ultimate re-use. More space for more people, new land and only the best and newest technology. Now all we have to do is drain the ocean and change water to land and land to water.
Meditations on how technological information interacts and passes through the body. What are invisible channels between us? How are we interacting with information in ways we have not done before? What is it doing to our bodies?
Plaster cast in a hanging plastic bag. Tied at the top and fastened to the edge of the table. The cross section something out of the inside of a cell. Gravity making the shape, such a basic idea pulled from a mind knowing very little about mold-making. Somehow precious.
An infinite number of the simplest iteration. Of two circles connected top to bottom. A re-shaping of the strongest form in service of creating a vessel that carries the most important liquid. How the smallest shift can bring about wildly different memories…connotations…thoughts. One is a goblet, one is the glass that sits beside your bed, one is the paper cup you pull from the stack at the doctor’s office.
A study on stillness as it relates to movement. Of stationary versus flexible. How can a body be both still and free to move at the same time?
An inner cone for sound transmission and an outer cone for muffling outside sounds (in the shape of the mouth or ear that it is protecting). Part of a larger network of tubes that would connect people across spaces. You would hear one person but only be able to speak to the other person, a series of problem solving maneuvers would thus be necessary in order to have a full conversation. What do the shapes need to look like in order to facilitate such an experience?
A bisection - with a reflection that ends up looking the same as what is behind it.
A momentary respite reflecting on the frustrations of working in teams.
A life mask that could have easily become a death mask as we forgot to be proactive on methods of breathing. How funny to think that perhaps a death mask could have once been a life mask but only became such by way of accidental manslaughter.
A focusing
You place an object in the bottle and then you may only smell it. Nothing more. You must be restrained.
