ARK 3: The Workshop Scenarios
collaboration with Torsten Zenas Burns
exhibition of videos, prints, & inflatables documented at
The Fosdick Nelson Gallery at Alfred University in Alfred, NY.
exhibition of videos, prints, & inflatables documented at
The Fosdick Nelson Gallery at Alfred University in Alfred, NY.
The exhibition included an entrance foyer with five prints, two books, and a video of a workshop conducted at Alfred University. The main gallery held a sculptural installation that included four inflatables tethered together and six projections upon or projected through the structure. The sculpture was flanked with another two projections at either end of the gallery.
foyer gallery with Workshopool prints 1 through 5, Workshopool video and books (not shown in image)
Workshop Scenario Vehicle 1 with still from Mother Guide in the background
The first part of the title, ARK 3: The Workshop Scenarios, takes its name from an obscure and short-lived children’s television series named Ark II from 1976 where a group of young scientists accompanied by a talking chimpanzee attempt to bring new hope to a post-apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by pollution and waste. Their science fiction mobile lab roams a landscape populated with feral children, feudal barons, and supernatural beings.
In ARK 3: The Workshop Scenarios, the mobile lab is re-imagined to be colorful inflatable orbs, and its occupants, as performed by the artists and willing workshop participants are evolved bodies rather than glamorous youths. Void of flesh and genetically modified to be in communion with the animal and insect worlds, these earth bound bio-nauts mine the environment around them looking for clues to their ancestral past as a way to pave a way into their possible simulated futures. In their search, they discover various recorded media including celebrity introductions to Laser Disc & CED technologies and clues to their semblance in the images of the iconic anatomical human, singing educator Slim Good Body. Video of their workshops and research was projected in multiple ways upon and through the mobile spheres that compelled their travel.
At either end of the main installation, experimental documentaries are projected based upon Burn’s Wiccan mother and Martin’s gay police officer father, both of whom act as spirit guides to the future explorers.
In ARK 3: The Workshop Scenarios, the mobile lab is re-imagined to be colorful inflatable orbs, and its occupants, as performed by the artists and willing workshop participants are evolved bodies rather than glamorous youths. Void of flesh and genetically modified to be in communion with the animal and insect worlds, these earth bound bio-nauts mine the environment around them looking for clues to their ancestral past as a way to pave a way into their possible simulated futures. In their search, they discover various recorded media including celebrity introductions to Laser Disc & CED technologies and clues to their semblance in the images of the iconic anatomical human, singing educator Slim Good Body. Video of their workshops and research was projected in multiple ways upon and through the mobile spheres that compelled their travel.
At either end of the main installation, experimental documentaries are projected based upon Burn’s Wiccan mother and Martin’s gay police officer father, both of whom act as spirit guides to the future explorers.
Workshop Scenario Vehicle 1 installation view
Workshop Scenario Vehicle 1 with still from Father Guide in the background
Workshop Scenario Vehicle 1 installation view
Workshop Scenario Vehicle 1 with still from Father Guide in the background
Workshop Scenario Vehicle 1 installation view details