UP-COMING PROJECTS:Works-in-Progress
Unreal City: Remixes of the Arizona Landscape
Work-in-progress. April 1, 2011
Phoenix Museum of Art
6:30-9:30pm. **FREE** PHX Fringe Festival Opening Night
A new multi-media performance installation by
Vessel (Rachel Bowditch), Verbobala (Logan Phillips and Adam Cooper-Terán (Verbobala) and Glenn Weyant (SonicAnta).
An original devised work that explores the beauty, poetry and fragility of the desert, the reality of water shortage, and the prospect of Phoenix becoming one of the largest ghost towns in the world when our water supply runs out–Phoenix as a mirage.
**Made possible by a Research and Creative Activity Grant from the Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts.
Unreal City:Concept/ Artistic Intervention
If you wander through the Arizona desert from town to town, one notices an abundance of an unusual phenomenon—ghost towns. Scattered throughout the Arizona landscape are abandoned towns and dwellings that once prospered. Arizona has over 450 ghost towns, more than any other state in the United States. Now, their fragmented remains echo and remind us of life that once filled these spaces. The one common thread that links these abandoned dwellings is the reality that resources ran out and living in these locations was no longer sustainable or even possible. They are haunting reminders of what happens when resources vanish and one is forced to relocate in order to survive.
Transfix performed by Logan Phillips at Gleeson Mine, Cochise County.
October 2010. Photographs by Glenn Weyant and Adam Cooper-Terán.
There are predictions that there is a one hundred year lifeline of water left in Phoenix. What happens when that runs out? Without water, Phoenix could be the largest ghost town on the planet as urban dwellers flee to find resources. Phoenix could be understood as a mirage and entirely unrealistic in terms of long-term sustainability. As the urban sprawl continues to expand in every direction, these already limited resources are stretched to a tipping point. While the idea of Phoenix as a ghost town is inherently apocalyptic, it could become a reality if measures are not made in the near future to protect the fragility of our water supply.
Photographs of Gleeson Mine by Rachel Bowditch and Glenn Weyant. October 2010.
While one could easily read the facts and spreadsheets that indicate this impending water shortage, this project will approach this topic through a visual, somatic, sonic, and theatrical investigation that both celebrates the beauty of the desert and its unique ecosystem as well as expose the inherent threat to life in this place and the rapidly diminishing resources. Starting with Japanese playwright/director Ota Shogo’s The Water Station (Mizu no Eki) as a jumping off point, the rich script offers of point of departure to investigate the complexity of water shortage in a poetic, non-literal way. Ota founded Tenkei Gekijo or Theatre of Transformation to create suggestive, non-verbal theatre and visual poetry. The Water Station is part of the 'Station Trilogy' including The Earth Station and The Wind Station. Ota, who died in 2007 at the early age of 67, was interested in “staging living silence” and creating “the drama of silence.” He wrote, “I want to explore the depths of silence which occupies 90% of our lives…Moving gracefully, but with glacial slowness, the people are frozen figures...During those rare moments when there is a quick gesture by one of the actors, one is startled out of what has become a trancelike state (Ota).” His style was inspired by Noh and Butoh but not directly.
Transfix performed by Rachel Bowditch and Logan Phillips at Gleeson Hospital. October 2010. Photographs by Glenn Weyant.
and changing. The travelers interact with the water - touching it, drinking from it, bathing in it -- changing the sound of the water each time. These figures are in transit, moving with all of their worldly possessions from an unknown location to an unknown destination—there is a tremendous sense of loss, longing, and desire. I envision between episodes flashes of video of the ghost towns, perhaps fragments of poetry - nothing concrete—impressions and traces.
Critics have described the work as “hypnotic, compelling, challenging, exquisite.” Phillip Zarrilli writes, “As a water station for the audience, a place for people to stop, drink in, and come away changed. It speaks to a place that is very personal. Each person who sees it is going to have an entirely different
experience.” The audience enters into an “unreal dream world - abounding in fragmentation and decay...almost universally dark...where human experience builds into a quiet, terrible beauty (Ota).”
In Arizona, the phrase “water station” is has the inescapable connotation of desert border crossings. Ever-present in news media, the Arizona water stations are maintained by groups who by and large have no direct political or religious affiliations, and whose volunteers come from many different locations and occupations. Likewise, the migrants themselves come from a variety of backgrounds and motivations. This diversity of human experience is largely lost in political discourse, which tends towards abstraction and scape-goating on both sides of the issue. The simplicity of the metaphor of a broken water facet center stage speaks volumes about the complexity of sustainability, border crossings, and living in the desert, without using a single word.
Transfix performed by Rachel Bowditch and Logan Phillips at Gleeson Mine. October 2010. Photographs by Glenn Weyant.
