AMBER WAVES
2014 | durational performance, letterpress, collagraph, linen, corn
about the PERFORMANCE
/watch composite performance here/
Amber Waves explores the historical relationship between farming and technology, and their impact on the ecology of the rural landscape. It is a memoriam for the family farm, and a call for the return of good stewardship and agrarian ideals; to create a culture that works for the land, rather than having the land for us.
Amber Waves acts a performative recapitulation of two American agricultural methodologies: pre-mechanization and post-mechanization. The performance is preceded by an oration of the poetic text, The Land, The Man, The Machine. Drawing on rhythm, time, reverence, and violence Amber Waves presents the dualities in our relationship with the land, and the estrangement of the body within the rural landscape, and its impact on the overall health of both the land and our culture.
The performance itself begins before it is in public view: in the field, in the studio.
The 15 yards of linen printed for the fields, or acreage, were made from two corn collagraph plates. The plates were made by sewing corn from Dekalb, Illinois onto a piece scrap of material and running this through the etching press both as a pressure print and a collagraph. That process is seen here . The plates themselves become an object of residue from the performative act of sowing the fields through printing.
