Opens on Aug 2 until Aug 24, 2025
Downstairs |
Anthony N. Alston
branta segnis
.
Video
“branta segnis” consists of performative documentation and watercolor paintings.
Unseasonably mild and more-temperate-than-typical winter months have effectively muffled the innate drive to migrate many Canadian Geese typically hold. Additionally, easily accessible food with lack of nutritional value may be causing deformities such as ‘angel wing’ to become increasingly prevalent. Intertwined environmental conditions contribute to—and exacerbate—the perfect storm of comfort, complacency, and learned helplessness.
Drone footage provides an unblinking bird’s-eye-view of attempts to gently coerce and corral geese toward the antipodes. Slowly circumventing trees and other obstacles, a figure makes Sisyphean attempts to herd flocks southward. The absurdity of the undertaking is punctuated and emphasized by digitally excising the figure itself, leaving only an unnatural ebbing and flowing of feathers.
These apparent exercises in futility are tracked using GPS, and the entropic paths are retraced to subsequently form abstract shapes. Each ‘map’ is painted using a diluted mixture of goose feces and isopropyl alcohol to form a very light, nearly imperceptible watercolor wash.
Given time/distance considerations for the “Home” exhibition, I’d adapt the watercolor component of the project; rather than display those pieces physically, an edit overlaying them in real-time atop the footage seems a decent alternative.
Unseasonably mild and more-temperate-than-typical winter months have effectively muffled the innate drive to migrate many Canadian Geese typically hold. Additionally, easily accessible food with lack of nutritional value may be causing deformities such as ‘angel wing’ to become increasingly prevalent. Intertwined environmental conditions contribute to—and exacerbate—the perfect storm of comfort, complacency, and learned helplessness.
Drone footage provides an unblinking bird’s-eye-view of attempts to gently coerce and corral geese toward the antipodes. Slowly circumventing trees and other obstacles, a figure makes Sisyphean attempts to herd flocks southward. The absurdity of the undertaking is punctuated and emphasized by digitally excising the figure itself, leaving only an unnatural ebbing and flowing of feathers.
These apparent exercises in futility are tracked using GPS, and the entropic paths are retraced to subsequently form abstract shapes. Each ‘map’ is painted using a diluted mixture of goose feces and isopropyl alcohol to form a very light, nearly imperceptible watercolor wash.
Given time/distance considerations for the “Home” exhibition, I’d adapt the watercolor component of the project; rather than display those pieces physically, an edit overlaying them in real-time atop the footage seems a decent alternative.
Using an interdisciplinary approach, the conceptual underpinning of any given project ultimately determines it’s own medium. The myriad of milieu between uninhabited natural ecosystems and developed urban environments constitute primary points of creation for pieces, a fragment of which remain in situ where created. Documentation via photos, sound, and video attempt to more permanently fix otherwise ephemeral interventions. Projects are often deceptively minimal, or, recursively layered; relics and distortions becoming magnified by each subsequent generation and permutation, a literal and figurative patina of inherent artifacts iteratively speckling any given piece.
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