(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Over a dozen installations and performances will be featured in Groundswell, an award-winning exhibition event at Olana State Historic Site on Saturday, September 13, 2014, from 2 to 6pm. Hundreds are expected to converge at Olana for site-specific performance and works in sound, installation, broadcast, and movement. Over a dozen artists will reflect on and react to Olana and its integral viewshed as an ambitious and early environmental work.
Groundswell will feature installations and performances from Kenseth Armstead, William Basinski, Steve Bull, Jane Carver, Ellen Driscoll with Daniela Gomez, Michael Garofalo, Mckendree Key, Hélène Lesterlin, Jack Magai, Man Forever, Laura Ortman, Mau Schoettle, and Bryan Zimmerman.
Olana’s 250-acre landscape was originally designed in response to its essential and spectacular views — the “Olana Viewshed” — by Hudson River School artist Frederic Church. On September 13, during this one-day exhibition event, audiences will explore the property’s undiscovered roads and naturalistic scenes as they encounter each project site. Picnicking will take place at a breathtaking clearing, which overlooks the Hudson River, the Catskill Mountains and beyond. The event will culminate with a performance by celebrated composer and artist William Basinski.
Groundswell installations and performances will be sited along Olana’s historic Ridge Road. When Church created this road, he famously wrote: “I can make more and better landscapes in this way than by tampering with canvas and paint in the studio.”
While passing through native woodlands and recently restored meadows, participants will interact with the artists and Olana’s background elements, which include: the distant mountains of Vermont and the nearby City of Hudson; the Mount Merino hillside which was protected by Scenic Hudson; the site of the regional St. Lawrence Cement battle; the original property of Thomas Cole, the founder of the Hudson River School and Church’s teacher; high voltage power lines with blinking support towers which cross the Hudson River along a route which might soon be expanded throughout the Hudson Valley; the site of the famed Catskill Mountain House, America’s great wilderness hotel, which disappeared in flames in 1963; and Blue Hill, which Church painted and which has recently been threatened with a larger communications tower along its ridgeline.
Since the 1970s, when a massive nuclear power plant was rejected because of Olana’s iconic views, Olana has represented a particularly American mix of art and environmentalism.
Groundswell Participating Artists:
Multimedia installation artist Kenseth Armstead’s most recent work spans from a first person investigation of the African-American experience inside the American Revolution from the perspective of a historical figure, James Armistead Lafayette. The founders’ high ideals and the penalty for deviation from them are both reshaped as objects that relate this point of view.
William Basinski is a classically trained musician and composer who has been working in experimental media for over 30 years. Employing obsolete technology, shortwave radio static, and analogue tape loops, his haunting and melancholic soundscapes explore the temporal nature of life and resound with the reverberations of memory and the mystery of time.
Steve Bull is a mixed-media technology artist whose practice includes cellphone karaoke and augmented reality. For over a decade, Bull has created location-specific narratives and games that explore the social, technological, and creative possibilities of cell phones.
Jane Carver’s performance and sound-based works are fueled by an interest in the accumulation and decay of sound, as well as the relationship between melody and memory. At Groundswell, Carver will work in collaboration with conceptual artist Mckendree Key whose practice centers around architecture and space. Key’s ongoing project The Den Transaction is an experiment in space as a commodity in Brooklyn, NY.
Artist Ellen Driscoll explores history, resource consumption, and material lineage in her sculptures, drawings, and installations. Recent projects imagine a ghostly and chaotic future through sculptural landscapes, constructed out of translucent, plastic bottles. Driscoll serves as Program Director of Studio Arts at Bard College.
Michael Garofalo is a sound artist, musician, and senior producer for the national public media project StoryCorps. At Groundswell, Garofalo will work with Laura Ortman and Bryan Zimmerman. Laura Ortman, a composer, multi-instrumentalist, visual and installation artist, has co-founded and performed in groups including The Dust Dive, Stars Like Fleas, and the all-Native American orchestra, The Coast Orchestra. Sound and visual artist Bryan Zimmerman’s work takes shape in performance, photography, collage, and installation, consistently exploring overlooked and undervalued human geography, land use, and outdoor culture.
Hélène Lesterlin founded Studio Reynard in 2012 for her work as director, performer, artist, curator, and instigator of collaborative projects; current works include a medieval puppet satire, as well as a solo dance disguised as a lecture using the archives of the Woodstock Historical Society. At Groundswell, Lesterlin will work in collaboration with Jack Magai, choreographer, dancer, and founder in 2006 with Lesterlin and Margit Galanter of Emergent Scores Lab (ESL), a weekly meeting of improvising time-based artists. His work deals with the battle for our attention between ideas and sensations. The current idea is “nature revives the tired modern soul.”
Man Forever is a exploratory percussion project helmed by drummer John Colpitts (aka Kid Millions), one of New York’s most critically acclaimed and versatile collaborators. Since its inception in 2010, Man Forever has comprised an exciting roster of guest performers.
Marian Schoettle constructs mobile scenarios with clothing and props that explore the experience of the self in relation to social, political, and physical environments. Her ongoing project ‘post industrial folk wear and commodities’ explores the theme of (dis)integration.
About Olana and The Olana Partnership
The eminent Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) designed Olana, his family home, studio, and estate as an integrated environment embracing architecture, art, landscape, and conservation ideals. Considered one of the most important artistic residences in the United States, Olana is a 250-acre artist-designed landscape with a Persian-inspired house at its summit, embracing unrivaled panoramic views of the vast Hudson Valley.
Olana State Historic Site, a historic site administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Taconic Region, is a designated National Historic Landmark and one of the most visited sites in the state. The Olana Partnership, a private not-for-profit education corporation, works cooperatively with New York State to support the restoration, development and improvement of Olana State Historic Site. To learn more about Olana and The Olana Partnership please visit www.olana.org.
About Wave Farm and WGXC 90.7-FM
Wave Farm is a nonprofit arts organization that celebrates creative and community use of media and the airwaves. Wave Farm programs provide access to transmission technologies and support artists and organizations that engage with media as an art form. WGXC, a program division of Wave Farm, is a creative community radio station based in New York’s Greene and Columbia counties. Hands-on access and participation activate WGXC as a public platform for information, experimentation, and engagement on 90.7-FM.
Groundswell is co-organized by The Olana Partnership and Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7- FM. Picnic delectables and libations provided by Swoon Kitchenbar. Solar powered performance amplification provided by Lotus Energy
440hz | Sunday Evening |
Second Ward Foundation presents an evening of experimental sound and composition in the auditorium, featuring William Basinski with Man Forever, Buke & Gase, and more announced soon. Selected works from the Second Ward art collection will be on display throughout the weekend.