We are currently planning a new series of wilderness performances–“Practical Performances 2013”– updated for the twenty-first century. Eight years ago, the “Practical Performances” project performed the ways that our brief “return to the land” re-framed the way we understood time, space, nature, technologies, the human species, and the earth. We used everyday rural activities to explore some of the most serious questions of modern life: sense of community, detachment from nature and place, mediation of time and space, mythologies of “nature” and wilderness, and environmental awareness. Through our video performances, we explored the history of our local landscape: the unmaintained, dirt roads, the lack of electricity or running water, its previous deforestation and use as farmland one hundred years earlier, and its precolonial possession by Native Americans for centuries before that.
The landscape of early twenty-first-century life looks a lot different already from the late-twentieth. “Practical Performances 2013” will reflect the changes in our media landscape and environmental consciousness in the twenty-first century, including ubiquitous computing devices and the distance one must travel to find “wild” natural spaces. As mobile media pervade every facet our our lives at this point in history, we believe it is essential to investigate the effect of this new digital landscape on our senses of ourselves as ecological beings, as human-animals subsisting on planet earth
Our videos have been exhibited at the following venues:
Filmwerkstatt, Düsseldorf, Germany
Volkshochschule, Erftstadt, Germany
De Balie, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Volksbildungswerk, Eschborn, Germany
Cinema, Münster, Germany
KoKi, Freiburg, Germany
ZOOM Kino, Brühl, Germany
Institute of Art & Design, Milwaukee, USA
Goethe-Institut Beirut, Lebanon
Kino 46, Bremen, Germany
Centrum Sztuki Wspólczesnej Laznia, Gdansk, Poland
CANTE, San Luis Potosí, Mexico
Museo de Arte, Zapopan, Jal., Mexico
Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Centro Histórico, Mexico
Centro Cultural Aleman A.C., Monterrey, Mexico
Fundación Ludwig de Cuba, Havanna, Cuba
Museo de Arte y de la Cultura, San José, Puerto Rico
Exit Art Gallery, NYC, USA
Sonoma Art Museum, California, USA
Ginza Art Laboratory, Tokyo, Japan
Artivistic, Montréal, Québec, Canada
University of Tasmania, School of Visual & Performing Arts, Tasmania
Devenport Regional Gallery and the Centre for the Arts in Hobart, Tasmania
Raw Video Art Space, Brooklyn, USA
Magmart Video Festival, Naples, Italy