2 Lost Soles was produced as the result of a series of workshops with a group of teenagers from the New York Aquarium’s Wildlife Conservation Corps, which focuses on public-facing science and ocean advocacy projects. Led by the Aquarium’s artist in residence Christy Gast, they began by employing the Plastic Census Protocol developed during Gast’s Ensayo #4…
From When Species Meet exhibition text In Christy Gast’s video Castor Magellanica, the figure of a beaver in the form of a rakish, life-size puppet cruises through the canals of Venice in an impeccably crafted wooden motorboat. Biologists know the beaver as an ecosystem engineer, able to transform forests into meadows, the faintest rivulet into…
Rock Quarry 2014 HD Video 4:54 Performer: Jarrett Earnest Audio: Whiskey Noise (Felecia Carlisle, Emile Milgrim, Mindy Abovitz, Thom Wheeler Castillo, Reed Van Brunschot, Christy Gast)
War Drums (25 minutes, 2014) was shot in one of the few existing stands of pine forest in Dade County, near a decommissioned nuclear missile base that was on high alert during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The camera pans the horizon in a continuous circle once per minute, moving like the second hand of a…
de la Cruz Collection, Miami 2010 From the de la Cruz Collection press release A tap dancer manipulates the literal point of connection between a performer and eponymous landscape to produce percussive song as she moves around the perimeter of Lake Okeechobee, Florida’s inland sea, via the Herbert Hoover Dike—a 30 foot high earthen berm…
We Live Inside the World 5 minutes 2010 Hollow Earth propaganda! The video’s point of departure is an assertion by a 19th century Utopian community in isolated coastal Florida that the Earth is a hollow sphere, cradling the entire universe inside. The video We Live Inside the World is constructed as a didactic document of performative…
Engines roaring, Jeepers conquer Potato Salad Hill while spectators watch in the right foreground from atop a building sprayed with Utopian graffiti. “The goddess is alive and magic is afoot.” Meanwhile a woman (the goddess?) demonstrates another kind of mastery, dramatically screeching as she cracks a whip which echoes through the canyon.
Canario 2008 Site-specific video & performance Created in collaboration with Nicolas Lobo and Psychic Youth Video light show and live psychedelic music performance at an abandoned marijuana grow house in a residential neighborhood deep in Dade County. All of the raw footage in the video projection was shot inside of the house, where light seeped…
Contemplating a Stream 2007 Performance for live webcast Inspired by Whitman, this performance was broadcast via live web stream. Contemplating a Stream was conceived for PerformaTV, artist Ronnie Bass’s internet-based performance venue created for Performa 07.
Amazonian News Network 2005 video, 5 minutes 45 seconds Amazonian News Network explores the Female Soldier archetype, representing both gender transgression and patriotism in popular media since the 17th century, through the visual language of a 24-hour news channel. Segments, both factual and fictional, magnify a reporting style in which individual narratives overshadow broader sociopolitical…
Left Mitten and The Great Denudation 2004 Sculpture & performance Fabricated of silicon-coated ripstop nylon, Left Mitten is decked out like a Country and Western performer, replete with fringe, appliqué, and embroidery. Country and Western costuming as a craft was perfected by Nudie’s Rodeo Tailor, among others, to outfit Hollywood’s singing cowboys and Grand Ole…