Friday, October 23 @ 7 PM
Would-be home shopping program host, bee-bearded beekeeper, back-to-the-lander, newly minted scuba diver and sea sponge obsessive… Yes, I am motivated by the questions arising from a “lived” approach to art-making, involving the creation of live events – and the images, objects and physical spaces that they generate.
Join us in Connexion ARC’s main space for a conversation with American artist Hope Ginsburg who is currently developing a project in partnership with COJO Divers and Connie Bishop in Lincoln, NB.
The piece will be exhibited in 2016 as part of “Explode Everyday: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder” at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
“Breathing on Land” is a body of work that takes meditation with scuba gear as a starting point to refocus attention on our bodies, their contexts and implicitly the health of our atmosphere. The images and documents of these “Land Dives” allude to the absurdity of hyper-mediation and have evoked an ominous survivalist impulse in the face of environmental catastrophe.
The mild, if not moderate discomfort of the equipment (its weight, warmth, constraints) keeps the wearer in mind of his or her physical presence, and the experience of a group of people breathing in chorus creates an unusual and amplified soundscape.
Events of the “Land Dive Team” have taken place in Captiva, Florida; Zekreet, Qatar; Richmond, Virginia and Beach Lake, Pennsylvania. A solo land dive in a Qatari desert, threatened by rising sea levels, invoked the specter of a “future ocean.”
PHOTO: Hope Ginsburg, “Breathing on Land: Zekreet, Qatar” (2015)