A Series of Practical Performances In The Wilderness - Summer 2005. This is ecoarttech's inaugural work. It feels a little dated to us and our current strands of thinking but somehow still fresh as the country air in summer of 2005!

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?

This performative video 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).