POINTS OF LIGHT (2021)
A livestreamed performance created for pandemic survival for Out of Site and the Experimental Sound Studio, re-performed for the Reconnect Festival.
RBG/GDR/RGB (2020)
/Ruth Bader Ginsberg/Great Diurnal Range/Red Green Blue/
December 12th, 2020 was the 20th anniversary of Bush vs. Gore, when the Supreme Court was made to make a definitive decision on the outcome of the 2000 election. It is also when Ruth Bader Ginsberg made her famous “dissent” statement, writing from the minority position “I dissent” rather than the traditional “I respectfully dissent,” in protest of the outcome. RGB/GDR/RBG is a durational performance, a brutal engagement with time, and an opportunity to meditate on everything that has changed and been lost this year. On December 12th, artists Meghan Moe Beitiks and Ray Oppenheimer sat on opposite coastal states with significant electoral votes: Florida and California. Using the projection design program Isadora, the artists projected an image of Ginsberg’s “Dissent” collar on their own collarbones. The images of the collar will change in color (RGB) based on the date from their collaborator’s tides. In California, Ray’s collar will change according to Florida tides– in Florida, Moe’s collar will change according to California tides. The performance lasted 34 minutes –one minute for every additional electoral vote Biden received over Bush’s 271 electoral votes. The tidal data was be drawn from predictions for levels between December 12th, 2020 and January 1st, 2021. The work also included audio and video from cultural ecologies at each site, images of election data and moments, and significant patterns from Ginsberg’s legacy. Beitiks and Oppenheimer enacted meditative spaces and gestures as a reflection on changing tides.
Great Diurnal Range is the difference, in tides, between the height of mean higher higher high water and mean lower low water. RGB is the standard color space for digital screens: Red, Green, Blue. They are also the primary colors of visible light, corresponding to Red, Green and Blue cones in the human eye. Ocean levels are rising. Political changes have profound ecological impacts. A lot has changed in 20 years, but the same fights keep resurfacing. RBG/GDR/RGB seeks to open up a space for reflection on interconnection, change, and political consequences. It seeks to honor the impactful legacy of a significant supreme court justice as a means both of reflecting on the ecological reality of cultural shifts, and meditating on hope for the future.
Sound structure by Stephen Germana, an artist that primarily performs experimental music –an improvisational performance practice that balances between noise, drone, and free jazz. His artistic practice includes algorithmic sound/video, radio transmission, and lens based media. With degrees from School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA), University of Miami (MM), and University of Minnesota (BM), he teaches Fine Arts and Art History in South Florida, living in West Palm Beach with his partner Sarah Knudtson and their cats, Roland and Boonmee (Meep).