Dead Horse Bay

First visit/investigation/actions happened yesterday afternoon.

Dead Horse Bay is named for the factories that used to exist on this site that processed New York City’s dead horses into fertilizer.  Later the site was used as a dump and then was covered over with fill from Jamaica Bay.  Now the shoreline is littered with remnants of trash from the turn of the century to the 60′s.  The space feels rich with ideas of consumerism and ecological history.   I will return here to do more writing and dancing and drawing and pictures.

I’ve been thinking about improvisation and authentic movement as a way to experience and process space and place and to situate myself in relationship to altered environments through movement.  A kind of movement that maybe provides some kind of play and attention/intention that opens space and possibility for…….what, I don’t yet know.  Change?  Sensitivity?  Empathy?  Ecological responsibility?  Curbing consumerism?  This work began in my head when I was creating Release;Recovery and Unnatural Territory.  On both occasions I found myself playing in the landscape and making pictures in addition to installing the sculptures.  I’ve been really appreciating the space I’ve had to further explore these ideas through the PS program.

In 2008 three artists collaborated in a residency at iLAND that investigated this site and these issues through the lens of ecology, architecture, photography and Alexander Technique.  I found their work after coming home and searching for information about Dead Horse Bay on the internet.  I continue to be excited and amazed as how closely the work of Jennifer Monson and artists supported by the iLAND program mirrors my own process and thoughts.

The fall of Unnatural Territory

I got word today that a storm over the weekend swept away my installation for SKW 2010. Maybe it’s nature’s way of fighting back against the idea of an ensuing development…
Here’s the what was and the aftermath: