Temporal Dislocation: BodyGates through Stars, Water and Land
Led by Moira Williams
Thursday March 20, Monday April 14, and Monday May 5 at Inwood Hill Park
Join in a three part series of stargazing with explorations in movement and chanting in Inwood Hill Park. We will experiment with different approaches to relocating the elemental systems of our bodies in relation those of the stars, water and land. The organic adult human body is 53% water. Some of the atoms in our body are primordial hydrogen and helium with denser elements like iron, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon. These elements that make up and connect our bodies to one another and the land are the same as the elements in the stars. To reconnect to our elemental bodies and open our “BodyGates” we will initiate different creative practices during three specific celestial events.
Series #1: Thursday March 20th 6pm-1am Rare celestial event 163 Erigone Astriod will hide the star Regulus found in the Leo constellation for up to 20 seconds. Erigone’s path/tail will be 45 miles long from NYC to Osweago, NY to Ontario, Canada. We start with a twilight walk that becomes a game of hide and seek using our bodies and inorganic materials. Then we share food and moon pies while stargazing.
Series #2: Monday April 14th 9pm-1am Mars comes within 57.4 million miles to the earth. Mars is usually 92.4 million miles away from the earth. Mars last close visit to Earth occurred in January 2008. Also happening that night is a total lunar eclipse. The last visible total lunar eclipse was 3.5 years ago. We start with a walk about near and far that becomes a design charette using our bodies and organic materials. Then we share food while stargazing.
Series #3: Monday May 5th 9pm-1am Meteor shower Eta Aquarids. The shooting stars are visible due to the dust remaining from Halley’s comet. The average number of stars seen is 10-15 per hour. We start with movement and chanting explorations that allow us to experience us star clusters through vibration and movement. Then we share food while stargazing.
***Please wear warm clothing and closed toe shoes. You are invited to bring food and non-alcoholic drinks to share.***
Jason Kendall is your friendly Inwood, NY neighborhood astronomer. He regularly sets up his telescope to share and inspire folks to look up into the night skies at Inwood Hill Park, NY. Jason’s appreciation for the stars is ode to noted astronomers Charles Schweighhause, Bart Bok and Priscilla Fairfield. Bart Bok and his wife Priscilla were pioneers in the study of the Milky Way especially the star forming regions called Bok Globules. Jason teaches at William Paterson University in the Physics Department, holds a Master of Science in Astronomy from New Mexico State University and has taught Astronomy at the high school and college level. Jason was a proud member of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Solar System Ambassador Program from 2009 to 2012 and is currently, a member of the Explainer Program at the American Museum of Natural History.
Suzan D. Polat is a dancer and choreographic artist. As a movement artist, Suzan is interested in research and process based work. She is originally from Istanbul and currently lives and works in New York City. Her works have been shown at the Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Turkey, Parlor X, Turkey, and the 11th Istanbul Biennial and was a danceWEB scholar in 2011 at the Impulstanz Vienna International Dance Festival.
In New York, Suzan collaborated with The Bureau for the Future of Choreography and participated as a researcher in Trajal Harrell’s project, “The Adventure.” Suzan’s current research concerns the problem of transgression and subjugation in social relationships, as well as the question of magic and mystery in the phenomenological world. She may be spotted at the New York Public Library sipping mugwort tea, pondering the direction of her intellectual inquiries: to create a work based on social relationships or dreams produced while drinking mugwort tea? Suzan holds a bachelor’s degree from The New School University, NY in creative writing.
Jorge Luis Porrata was born in Camagüey, Cuba. He is poet, an artist and an educator. In 2001 he immigrated to the USA and lived for 7 years in the Southwest, where chanting became an essential part of his spiritual practice. He has illustrated six books and written one for the Cuban/Cuban American publishing house Homago, based in Miami. He currently lives in Fairfax, Virginia, where he teaches art courses at George Mason University. He has taught art workshops on Taino and Mayan culture at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. His artwork explores the interconnectedness between diverse themes, like text and image, cultural backgrounds and spiritual beliefs. He is a multimedia artist who crosses disciplines between writing, printmaking, drawing, animation, and performance art.
Jill Sigman (choreographer/artist) asks questions through the manipulation of body and materials. Trained in classical ballet, postmodern dance, art history, and analytic philosophy, Sigman has been making dances and performance installations since the early 90s. Based in New York City, she is Artistic Director of jill sigman/thinkdance which she founded in 1998, the same year she received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. Sigman has been a Fellow at the Center for Creative Research at NYU, a Creative Campus Fellow at Wesleyan University, a Choreographic Fellow at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, a Movement Research Artist in Residence, a Resident at the Acadia Summer Art Program, an Artist at the Guapamacátaro Interdisciplinary Residency in Art and Ecology in Mexico, and a Fellow of the Kri Foundation in New Delhi. Over time, Sigman’s work in dance has evolved to include the choreography of audience experience, found materials, and perception. She is currently at work on The Hut Project, an exploration of issues around waste, sustainability, and real estate through the creation of a series of site-specific structures made of found materials. For more information, see: http://www.thinkdance.org
Since she was a kid Moira Williams has believed in and practiced levitation. As an unsuccessful levitator, she continues to listen and look for exchanges of phenomena. For Moira, exchanges of wonder are opportunities found in the reciprocity of gestures among people, the individual and nature. She creates participatory works that bring people together and make explicit the complexity of their community and the environment. Her work is shaped by a spirit of relatedness, a relatedness that may be found in the gestures of exchange, by codes of how individuals and groups might relate to one another; how we really might exchange a glance, a word a gesture or a language; how we might negotiate something we call our ethical responsibility towards one another and develop possible ways for reciprocity and eternal levitation.
Moira is a Co-founder of the walking cooperative, Walk Exchange and a Laundromat Project’s Create Change Program alumni. Recent work has been seen at, No Longer Empty’s This Side of Paradise, Rumite in Beweging Netherlands, Bowery Arts + Sciences, The Kitchen, MoMA PS1, Flux Factory, Walk 21 in Germany and the Ghetto Biennale in Haiti.
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