RITUALS FOR VISUAL LISTENING: I. WATER & II. NIGHT

Live performances with the general public, performed in collaboration with members of The Asheville Darkroom, USA. Part of Re:Happening celebrating the legacy of Black Mountain College at the original site of Black Mountain College (1933-1957), North Carolina, USA. 2018.

Both rituals intend to embed the photographic process back within natural, organic systems: making photographs directly with the land, lake, trees and plants at site, attempting to relocate photography into an expanded field of chance and gesture, performance, drawing, painting, and poetry, alongside vision. Such an approach aligns with the open, expanded-boundary, multi-sensory approaches inhabited at Black Mountain College, where dancing, drawing, architecture, gardening, music, poetry, painting and photography were taught via fluid, interconnecting experiential methodologies.

I. WATER

Exposing light sensitive paper and textile to sunlight, bodies and found objects. Live developing the paper and textile in the waters of Lake Eden, drying the images in the sun.

4 hours duration.

1 x 111.7 x 400cm textile cloth; 40 x 21cm x 29.7cm images on cyanotype paper, each unique, created from performance.

II. NIGHT

Leading the audience on a photographic night procession into the forest areas of Black Mountain College, using flashlight, fire and the tools of early photography, creating spontaneous photographic exposures as they moved; pressing, folding and placing light-sensitive paper into physical contact with the landscape. Each photogram was then wet-darkroom developed outdoors in a live process-performance, transforming night back into darkroom.

1.5 hours duration.

10 x 21cm x 29.7cm silver gelatin prints, each unique, created from performance.

Thank you to both Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center (BMCM+AC) and The Asheville Darkroom, North Carolina, USA.