Remnants is an site-specific outdoor performance project that involves over 30 inter-disciplinary artists. In less than a year, the project has grown exponentially through many iterations, including invited performances that are mindfully tailored to the environment of the installation, the stories of the land, and its audience.
We are thrilled to continue this embodied, consciousness-raising artwork, but we need your help!
This funding will be used to pay the artists involved, secure permits, and cover production costs. On principle, we aim to have this piece fully accessible to the public. Everybody should have access to the natural world. As a result, we don’t charge for tickets. Though this is our conviction, it limits our revenue that can contribute to artist pay and production.
A performance installation In performance, Remnants is an immersive installation combining dance, photography, music, spoken word, and Indigenous storytelling. The audience moves through the site, experiencing stories and depictions of dispossession from and re-connection to land, nature, and self. The project emerged out of a Fringe Festival performance held in Rochester’s Ellison Park in September 2021. See an excerpt here. OR check out performance reviews here.
Remnants includes five main collaborators (see here), as well as very talented cast. Learn more about our talented performers here.
A process of re-connection
In the process, dancers, storytellers, musicians, writers, and visual artists reflected on the legacy of the earth, their connection (or disconnection) to it, and how our bodies seek to connect with the elements of the land. The work asks audiences for their presence in the moment and suggests that this is a collaborative work. While the performers share, the audience attends — and the quality of this attention and our collective intention brings Remnants towards a transformational experience for all involved.
An inroad to a difficult topic This project offers a multi-pronged artistic invitation to look at difficult topics -- complex histories, suppressed realities, and dark pasts that remain embedded in the land -- and our bodies. The power of the art--dance, music, storytelling, poetry and visual media--can move people in a way to bypass their defenses and allow the emotion to seep in. The audience discern many different ways to feel empathy and inclusion while embodying the experience, which we know is the most powerful form of learning and the only road to action.
And educational opportunity As artists, educators, and keepers of knowledge, we feel it is important to highlight inequities that exist in our histories, as chronicled in the land that we activate. Trish Corcoran leads this with her abundance of natural knowledge and familial stories from her Onondowaga lineage. Stella Wang provides research and beautiful poetic writing unearthing honest histories and indigenous ecological knowledge. Andrea A. Gluckman visually reveals untold histories in her photography. Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp leads students in physical connection to space. Greg Woodsbie encourages listening as co-creation as it relates to the quality of attention.
Our country has come to a historic moment through the racial reckonings revived in 2020. What will be next for every body? We hope that this project will shed light on indigenous inequities that have spanned this land across time. It became apparent, during our performances and discussions, that this work is essential.
Rather than hosting lectures, we facilitate a transformative learning experience through multiple modalities. The intention is to encourage understanding on a physical level. When students learn through creative process and physical experience, it enables intentional questioning of systemic injustice in ways of being. Read about one iteration of this educational work here.
This project takes place on the unceded lands of the Onondowaga (Seneca) Nation, “Keepers of the Western Door, ” of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. With respect, we honor the legacy and history of this land. We honor the Native peoples past, present, and emerging.
