Sunspotting a Walking Forest by Jenny Marketou was organized by More Art in collaboration with fashion artist and cultural theorist Otto von Busch and choreographer Wanda Gala with the participation of students from Parsons School of Design, Clinton Middle School and seniors from Hudson Guild, Chelsea, NYC. 

 

“Sunspotting the Walking Forest ” 2012 is a project with multimedia/ interdisciplinary endeavor, consisting of workshops and a final performance. Workshops were held at Clinton Middle School, Fulton Houses and Parsons School of Design with the artists and focused on creating multiple and versatile artifacts, from banners to t-shirts and flags, and explored how social design can be used as a social interface. Using light sensitive paint and reflective material, the messages displayed on the objects gradually transform. Participants considered how identity and free speech concerns can be negotiated through textile design and demonstrated how the synthesis of fashion and language can be a powerful tool for enacting meaning during public engagement.

 

During the walking performance on the High Line, participating performers will wear and carry their messages activated through everyday gestures and movements. Similar to a gymnastics parade or a group ritual, the active intervention slowly moves in and out of the High Line landscape, while spectators try to decode the words in the artifacts and the symbolic movements. As a tactic of recreating an ecological balance among nature, people and the urban environment, moving through the Highline creates a spatial fleeting “dialog” with the landscapes and the audience and places the topography of the Highline in a new consciousness. The spatial element of “storytelling” is stressed in French sociologist Michel de Certeau’s notion of ‘spatial stories’, a device that allows connections to be made between people and places. Through the act of walking and acting these connections are continually made physically and conceptually over time and through space. Funding for this project has been provided in part by public funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with The NYC Council. The project was made possible by the generous contribution of the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation.