"A Series of Practical Performances In The Wilderness Summer 2005 "
EcoArtTech: Cary Peppermint & Christine Nadir
Network Performance - Podcast Database & DVD
Summer 2005

“A Series of Practical Performances In The Wilderness - Summer 2005” is a quicktime database networked performance work made in the woods and on rural back-lots and is part of Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir’s series of performance art videos begun in 2002.

The North American concepts of wilderness are informed by nationalist ideologies and concepts of freedom as a wild, un-checked frontier of possibility. Is there such a thing as wilderness as we are inclined to see it? How could one know or understand that which is truly wild much less employ it toward nation-building? Is there an intellectual humor in the offerings of performances that purport to be both practical and wild?

“A Series of Practical Performances In The Wilderness - Summer 2005” presents a relatively “natural” environment as a historical space and a place of performance: labor, foraging, food, friendships, “philosophical bickering” (as one reviewer called it). This set of eight performances also documents the experiences of two New Yorkers embarking on their first four months in the woods -- trying to establish a functional home without running water, electricity, or maintained roads; developing relationships with locals; un-learning the romanticization of nature while re-learning humanity’s dependence on the environment for survival; and researching the details of the history of the land and the surrounding area (its previous deforestation, its logging, its near use for an auto salvage yard, its use as farmland and grazing ground one hundred years ago, its inhabitation by Native Americans for millennia before that).

ECOARTTECH

Click here to view all 8 quicktime videos

If you have seen this database of videos online or through any other venue, we welcome your response.