internatural 1
A dance+vocal performance at South Tufa, Mono Lake, September 21, 2019. Video and installations to be created in the future with additional 2019 performance-video shot around Mono Lake.
Credits

Video Clips:
Excerpt from an early morning dance meditaiton/reherasal:
https://vimeo.com/492918075

Excerpt 2
https://vimeo.com/645793407


Excerpt 3
https://vimeo.com/645774273


Excerpt 4
https://vimeo.com/645782709


Excerpt 5
https://vimeo.com/645778297


Excerpt 6
https://vimeo.com/645769044


Rough Edit of Performance Documentation:
available on request, email info@ninawaisman.net

Program Notes
A small group of aliens arrive at Mono Lake. Where they come from, the way to learn about something is to synchronize with its rhythms and behaviors, to let it tune them from the inside out.

Can humans similarly learn more sustainable ways from our elders, i.e. every other life form on the planet - before we extinguish most of them?

Location:
South Tufa Area, Mono Lake, CA.
Test Station Rd, Lee Vining, CA 93541
WXQF+F6 Lee Vining, California

Additional 2019 video-performance sites at Mono Lake include Panum Crater, Black Point, Tufa ruins east of Navy Beach, Northern shore sites, Northwest Coulee and North Coulee.

Written, Designed and Directed by:
Nina Waisman

Choreographed collaboratively by:
Hyosun Choi (also performing)
Paola Escobar (also performing)
Hyoin Jun (also performing)
Samantha Mohr (also performing)
Nina Waisman
Flora Wiegmann (early project movement research)

Vocal Composition / Performance:
Carmina Escobar

Scientific Consultant / Collaborator:
Dr. David Herbst

Cinematographer (documentation and related, forthcoming video):
Christopher Wormald

2nd Camera (documentation and related, forthcoming video):
Sisely Treasure

Sound Recorded by:
Justin Asher

Video Editing:
Nina Waisman

Produced by:
Forest Island Project Residency in collaboration with U.C. Santa Barbara’sThe Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory. For the Forest Island Session "Avalanche Dynamics"

The Forest Island Project is an arts and cultural organization in the Eastern Sierra promoting original cultural production through it’s residency and programming. www.forestislandproject.com

Upcoming Video / Fundraising:
This performance will feed into a longer sci-fi/dance/nature-nurture/art film created by Nina Waisman and collaborators who’ve contributed to the multi-disciplinary research it relies on. The film will draw on scientific and non-western research into nature, intercutting scenes capturing a wide range of everyday human activity, with scenes conveying the rhapsody of giving full attention to the earth’s other-than-human members. We are excited to pursue an artistic investigation of intelligence across species - in hopes of finding ways to counter the lack of intelligence that has led us to push the earth’s 3.5 billion year experiment with life close to the breaking point.

If you are interested in supporting the video, please consider donating what you can. Thank you!!! Contact Forest Island Project: forestislandproject@gmail.com or Nina Waisman: info@ninawaisman.net

Thanks:
The artists are very grateful for support of all kinds offered by Kiersten Puusemp, Christopher James, Dr. Carol Blanchette, Annie Barrett, Michael Light, Dr. Penelope J. Boston, Dr. Sharmila Bhattacharya, Corina Sanchez, Eric Tymstra, Sherryl Taylor, Kate and Paul Page, Chris Orr, Brian O’Connell, Alice Konitz, Valentine Eastern Sierra Reserves and The Mono Lake Committee.

Avalanche Dynamics
Artists Alice Könitz, Brian O’Connell, and Nina Waisman have been invited by Forest Island as participating resident artists for the 2019 Program. Over the course of a one-year fellowship, each artist will make visits to explore the Eastern Sierra, using SNARL as a basecamp, in order to research and develop artistic projects in conjunction with scientists at SNARL. The fellowships are structured to build towards a three-week residency period in late Spring 2019, followed by a final presentation of the artists’ work near the end of the fellowship term that Fall..

For the Forest Island Project’s third residency session, FI and UC Santa Barbara’s Mammoth Lakes based Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Lab have formed a partnership to investigate the shared interests of artists and scientific researchers working in the Eastern Sierra. Developed by FI, SNARL, and artist Brian O’Connell, this year’s program brings together three artists to collaborate with SNARL scientists under the title Avalanche Dynamics.

Avalanche Dynamics considers how artists and scientists combine procedural rigor with the pursuit of something more felt than already known — a hunch, a nascent hypothesis, inspiration even. In the pursuit of knowledge, a tension develops between process and intuition. When the two come into alignment an intellectual, emotional, and cognitive avalanche of insight can be released. The artistic projects developed through Avalanche Dynamics hope to achieve such moments through interaction with the basic forces that inform the evolving natural, cultural, and lived environment of Mammoth Lakes, California.