36.6/Peaks - 2022-2024 Climate Challenge Cohort

36.5_bold_50.png36.5/A Durational Performance with the Sea


Peaks


36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea (2013 – present) is a site-specific participatory performance and multichannel video artwork that invites people to have a radically present embodied experience with the Sea and Waters that surround us, and to reconsider our contemporary relationship with Water and Sea-level rise on personal, communal, and global scales.

  • 2022— Free and Accessible 36.5 Global Livestream of 36.5 / New York Estuary - On the day of the final performance, hundreds will join me to stand in Water at the Cove in NYC; hundreds more will participate in satellite performances in eight global locations where I’ve created 36.5 works previously; and thousands of people will watch the live stream in public spaces and online, and/or standing in their local bodies of Water around the world.
  • 36.5 Legacy: In 2023, my focus will shift to creating the final form video installation and organizing all other project documentation so it can effectively be shared with the public, in exhibition format and in print.

PEAKS (2017 – present) is a cumulative video project, a site-specific performance installation, and an experimental exhibition that
reuses the everyday detritus of the built environment (ie. tinfoil, coffee grounds, paper) to construct brief cinematic moments of
geological vastness. Created in collaboration with composer and digital artist Joshua Dumas, PEAKS investigates scale, awe and
beauty, human ecological impact, corruption, deep time, modes of production, waste, and distribution. The first two phases of
development for this project happened in 2017 and 2018. Now it is time for me to revisit this work and take the next step to share it
with the greater public.

  • We imagine the work as YouTube ads, on subway flat-screens, as a smartphone app (a Peak unlocks every 50K steps), in a film fest, in museums, projected on a glacier. We will engage commercial and common spaces, as well as traditional sites of cultural presentation. This expansive dissemination, and its implicit critique of capital, is a core component of the work. Meanwhile, the multimedia installation translates the videos into a 3-dimensional environment for public activation and is punctuated with daily performances. Using choreography, sound, and projections on sculptural objects and bodies in motion, the performance invites participation and explores site-specificity, everyday activities, and deep time.